and its treatment taken from his own clientele. We shall, therefore,
follow our author here rather more carefully and literally than usual,
that we may learn the views of an English physician of the thirteenth
century on, perhaps, the most characteristic disease of his
countrymen.

Gilbert says: "Arthetica is a disease of the joints arising from a
flux of humors descending into their continuity (_concathenationem_).
The name is derived from the Latin _artus_, a joint, and the disease
comprehends three species, viz., _sciatica_, disease of the scia,
or the ligaments uniting the spine with the hip; _cyragra_, disease
of the joints of the hands; and _podagra_, disease of the bones
and joints of the foot, due to the descent of humors into their
continuity. Sometimes, too, the disease affects other organs,
occasioning pain in sensitive members, as, e.g., the head, and then
derives its name from the part affected, as _cephalea_, _emigranea_ or
_monopagia_. Occasionally likewise some humor runs down (_reumatizat_)
into the chest, spreading over the nerves of the breast or those of
the spine between the vertebrae, and sometimes to other places.
Hence the disease derives the general name gout (_gutta_), from its
resemblance to a drop (_gutta_) trickling or falling downward and
flowing over the weaker organs, which receive the humor. For gout
arises particularly from rheumatic causes. Now, as the humors are
rather uncontrollable (_male terminabiles_) fluids, they flow towards
the exterior and softer parts, like the flesh and skin, which receive
their moisture and being soft, dilatable and extensible, there results
some swelling. But if the humors are hard and dry, they are confined
within the interior of the organs, such as bones, nerves and
membranes: and these, being hard in themselves, do not receive the
moisture, nor suffer extension or dilatation, and thus no swelling