Finally, many of the difficulties connected with this subject are reasonably met by Hutchinson's[241] doctrine that there exists a state of tissue-health which is transmissible by inheritance, which involves liability to inflammations of joints and fibrous structures, and upon this arthritic diathesis as a foundation may be built up, under the influence of special causes, a tendency to gout, rheumatism, or any one of their various modifications or combinations.
[Footnote 241: _Trans. International Med. Congress_, ii. 95; Guéneau de Mussy's chap., "De la Diathèse Arthritique," _Clin. Méd._, 1874, t. i. 317-338.]
Hutchinson has demonstrated that gout is often followed by rheumatoid arthritis, the lesions characteristic of both affections coexisting in the same joint. Charcot and Cornil had previously observed the same { 90} thing.[242] Acute and perhaps chronic rheumarthritis have sometimes preceded rheumatoid arthritis. If a predisposition, inherited or acquired, to rheumatoid arthritis exist, the occurrence of gouty or rheumatic irritation in the joints may suffice to induce the peculiar form of disturbance characteristic of the rheumatoid affection, just as injuries sometimes develop the partial form.
[Footnote 242: _Mémoires de la Société de Biologie_, 1864.]
There is a group of conditions affecting the sexual functions and organs of women which appear to be specially connected with the general peripheral form of rheumatoid arthritis. The disease follows pregnancy, and specially frequent pregnancies, protracted lactation, and various disorders of menstruation. The latter influence obtained in ten out of eleven instances of the disease met with in girls under eighteen by Fuller.[243] The frequency of the disease about the period of the menopause has been already mentioned. Todd noticed its coincidence with dysmenorrhoea. Ord in an able and original paper[244] has lately dwelt upon ovario-uterine disorder or irritation as a frequent active cause of the disease, having in his opinion met with 33 instances of the kind. The relationship between these various conditions of the functions and organs of generation and rheumatoid arthritis cannot be regarded as settled. Garrod supposed that such conditions, by causing debility, predisposed to the articular disease. Todd, an ardent humoralist, held the nexus between the two to be unhealthy secretions of the uterus, leading to blood impurity; while Ord has ably defended Remak's view that a direct influence of the nervous system is the real link of relationship. It seems necessary to remark that mere coincidence may play a large rôle in the explanation of many of these cases. In 17 at least of Ord's 33 cases the conditions stated by that author cannot safely be adduced as anything more; and it is probable that they would be found present in much the same proportion in any other chronic painful disease of women.