The causes, pathology, and treatment of chronic rheumatism / by Ralph Stockman.

  • Stockman, Ralph, 1861-1946.
Date:
[1904?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The causes, pathology, and treatment of chronic rheumatism / by Ralph Stockman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    symptoms of pain referred to the muscles, joints, and nerves; but such symptoms or the lesions causing them cannot be properly de¬ signated as “ chronic rheumatism ” in the strict sense, more especi¬ ally as acute rheumatism is not the only condition which precedes them and is responsible for their presence. Nevertheless, the name “ chronic rheumatism ” has been so long and so universally applied to chronic painful conditions of the muscles and joints that its retention is now a matter of convenience. In the popular mind, and also to some extent in the medical mind, the name has been long associated, specially and almost exclusively, with affec¬ tions of the joints, and formerly when so many separate and quite distinct articular lesions were classed together as “rheumatic” this idea was to a large extent justified. Gradually, however, the meaning of the term has become much narrowed by more accurate diagnosis, and we now distinguish rheumatoid arthritis, morbus n coxae senilis, coxa vara, pulmonary osteo-arthropathy, Haygarth’s nodosities, septic and gonorrhoeal arthritis, and other diseases and affections implicating the joints, as things quite distinct from each other and from chronic rheumatism. It is also very generally recognised that the articular structures proper—bone, synovial membrane and cartilage — are not primarily affected in chronic rheumatism, but that the parts implicated are the fibrous ligaments of the joints, and more especially the aponeuroses and fibrous insertions of the muscles, fasciae, the periosteum, and the fibrous tissue generally of the muscles, bones, and joints. Any wide¬ spread or localised pain or stiffness occurring in these structures, and especially if it recur from time to time, is generally classed as “ rheumatic,” provided no other definite cause can be assigned. In our systematic treatises the condition is described under the headings “ Chronic Rheumatism, ’ “ Muscular Rheumatism,” “ Mus-