5 MARCH 1842, Page 14

RHEUMATISM.

THE following case, which our correspondent, an officer of rank in the Army, has privately authenticated by his name, is one of the many curious instances in which nature, time, and the neglect of despair, (operating, perhaps, by some occult mode on the princi- ple of counter-irritation,) work cures that have baffled art. These are. the cases that form the opprobrium of medicine and make the fortune of quacks. Had our military friend applied to an empiric at the time he threw off his wrappers, the nostrum would have had the credit of the cure.

TO TER EDITOR OP THE SPECTATOR.

Dublin. 15th February 1842.

Sin—With reference to Dr. MAcLEoD's statement upon Rheumatism, at me 138 in the Spectator of the 5th instant, I beg to say, that-on the night before the battle of Waterloo I slept in an inch deep of water ; and after the march to Paris and then to Amiens I was suddenly attacked with rheumatism, and no wonder. This complaint lasted for many years, and each year I was attacked with increased violence ; till during one of these periods I was unable to sit upright for eight months. No medical treatment had any effect; every remedy was tried in vain; hot-baths, cold-baths, sea-bathing, &c. I was covered with flannel, and then with chamois-leather, from my throat to my ankles; and finding no relief, I threw all these things off. From that time the complaint diminished ; and for the last ten years I have not had the slightest return of it.

This case, however, is only to be followed under strict analogy— when every medical means and the patience of the sufferer are both exhausted. Even then it may fail—and if it fail, would probably make matters worse. It is like resorting to "potations pottle deep" in order to throw off an incipient but undeveloped disorder : if the deep drinker should wake well, it is all right ; but if not, it is all wrong.