roots and other parts pound well with two hundred grains of pepper,
and boil down in the best wine until reduced in volume to one-half.
Let the patient take this freely on an empty stomach until cured."

Another more elaborate prescription consists of a long list of
ingredients, including burnt sponge, saponaria, the milk of a sow
raising her first litter, with numerous simple herbs, and the sole
object for which this nonsensical farrago is introduced here is to add
that both these prescriptions are copied from the surgery of Roger. It
is important too to remark here that we owe to Roger the introduction
of iodine, under the form of burnt sponge, into the treatment of
goiter.

In the failure of medical treatment, Gilbert directs the employment
of surgical means, e.g., the use of setons, or, in suitable cases,
extirpation of the goiter with the knife. If, however, the tumor is
very vascular, he prefers to leave the case to nature rather than
expose the patient to the dangers of a bloody operation. The whole
discussion of goiter is manifestly a paraphrase of the similar chapter
of Roger, who also introduced into surgical practice the use of the
seton.

In Gilbert's chapter entitled "_De arthretica passione et ejus
speciebus_," we are introduced to the earliest discussion by an
English physician of that preeminently English disease--gout. We may
infer, too, from the length of the discussion (thirty or more pages)
that this was a disease with which Gilbert was not only familiar, but
upon the knowledge of which he prided himself greatly. Indeed, it is
one of the few diseases of the Compendium in which the author assumes
the position of a clinician and introduces examples of the disease