The treatment of simple acute articular rheumatism may be abandoned to palliatives and nature. Apart from complications, such cases nearly always recover under rest and careful nursing. Try and disabuse yourselves of the idea that their cure is dependent upon medicines alone; to help nature is often the best we can do. No treatment was ever invented which stopped a case of acute articular rheumatism. It cannot be stopped by bleeding, or sweating, or purging, by niter, by tartar emetic, by guaiacum, by alkalies, by salines, by salicylic acid, or by anything else. The physician can palliate the pain and perhaps shorten the attack, can control and perhaps prevent complications and stiffness of the joints, but he cannot arrest the disease. Where rest, proper diet, and warmth are enjoined, most cases will get well just as soon without as with the use of medicinal methods.

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