The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-04-13
EXTRA! EXTRA!
 CASE OF CIRCUIT FOUND

CASE OF CIRCUIT FOUND
 Whenever the conductor of this health service gets off one of his arbitrary asseverations in reference to the nonenity of an alleged mal- adv. such as "biliousness", "rheu- matiz", "cold", nervous break down" or"indigestion", some one somewhere, perhaps even 8 phy- sician, gets off a sarcastic retprt or asks a few rhetorical questions without coming to actual grips on the issue, There wouldn't be much fun in this game if it were not so.
 Deliberately and with malice a. forethought I have on numerous occasions in the past few years rid iculed the quaint conception of gout and pointed out the frail sup port on which the clinical definition of this hypothetical disease is based. I had hoped to provoke e some good doctor into a heated argument about it, but for all the reaction elicited by these challen- ges my negation of gout as path ological entity might be shared by all medical men who have any notions about the question at all.
 It is therefore with a good deal of astonishment and not q little delight that I come upon report of case of gout published in the February 1884, Bulletin of the Buff falo Academy of medicine, by l.. M. Lockie, M. D. and R. Hubbard, Ph. D.
 The patient, a man 52 years old, %o hn 1nSnifa q several times in the past three years, with periodic attacks of pain in various joints, especially both knees and both big toes, which inca apacitatied him a week or two. The joints became swollen. red and quite painful. When the at tacks subsided there was no pain or other disab ability in the intervals.
 Twice in the three years little nodules or hard swellings called "tophi" have been obtained from the patients ears. There are de- posits of monosodium urate (not uric acir but a salt of uric acid). {. They are often found in the finger tip under the skin, or over the cheek or side of the nose, in the palm, in an eyelid and unfortunc- nately for the theory of gout, peo- pie having these "tophi" are usu- ally free from any history of such trouble or indeed they are free from any complaint at all.
 The Buffalo patient received new tangled medicine which pur- ports to increase excretion of uric acid". It had little if any influence on the proportion of uric acid in the blond and none on the pain in the joints. But when he was given an old empirical remedy, colchi- cum, this seemed to bring relief to the Joint pain and increased eltm- ination of uric acid. The investiga- tors suggest that the doses of wine of colchicum or of the active prin- ciple of colchicum called colchicine should be sufficient to produce some griping and slight diarrhea for the best results.
 Oh, well, may be just terribly dumb, but think any other physic would produce the same results which, in my judgment. are pre- cisely the results one should an- ticipate if nothing whatever issdone in the way of specific treatment other than letting the sore joints rest, and applying heat pr counter irritation or such analgesics or se- datives as may be indicated to make a patient as comfortable as circumstances will permit until the attack, whatever 1t is, passes.
 Anyway, Drs Lockie and Hub bard have brought no new evidence to establish the entity of 'gout.. Every symptom or sign they men .tion might occur and does occur in various other conditions which no- body now associates with the uric acid complex.