This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER I. ACUTE ARTICULAR RHEUMATISM. DEFINITION. A constitutional febrile disease, the immediate local manifestations of which are painful inflammatory changes at the site of the articulations, several or many of which may be simultaneously involved. CAUSATION. Innumerable theories have been from time to time advanced, and one by one abandoned, as to the real causes active in producing an attack of acute articular rheumatism. The tendency of present medical thought is, to ascribe all pronounced morbid systemic disruptions to the presence of some specific organic pathogenetic poison, and acute rheumatism is receiving its quota of scientific investigation in this respect. Any physician, therefore, posing as abreast of current thought, must stand prepared to give credence to well authenticated proof that the germ of rheumatism has been isolated. Pending such demonstration, that which is known as the uric acid theory of causation is perhaps the most tenable and unassailable; at any rate, it is a fact that treatment, though based even vaguely upon this van-scientific hypothesis, has proved so far the most universally successful. It is probable, however, that many of the ingenious surmises hitherto assiduously promulgated, have contained elements of truth essential as factors to the perfect solution of the problem as to the definite aetiology of this disease. Accepting, then, the remote causation of acute rheumatism as admitting of no present demonstration, we must fain be content with the consideration of the more immediate influences which appear to result in its exhibition. The attempt to locate the disease as especially prevalent in certain climates, or under certain atmospheric conditions, does not seem to have been any too successful, ..