Here's the experiences and thoughts of a doctor specializing in gout over one hundreds years ago - how times have changed!

Have we a remedy or remedies essentially Homoeopathic to the gouty attack ?

To this I think an affirmative answer can now be given. I propose to show that Urtica wrens, the common stinging nettle, is such a one, and I think Natrurn, mutriaticum has strong claims to be so considered. also. But Nat. mur. is a classic remedy in homoeopathy it is well known and much used by such as have gripped the true in¬wardness of homoeopathic - drug-action.

As I will presently relate, I have used Urtica-urens a good deal for some years in ague and spleen affections, and thus it comes to pass that I have had ample opportunities of becoming intimately acquainted with its powers. Patients under the influence of small material doses of Urtica will often pass quantities of gravel.. The first occasion of my observing this in a striking manner was in a middle-aged maiden lady, who came over from Germany to place herself under my care, who smelled so strongly of nettles that it nauseated me when-ever it was my duty to examine her. She had, amongst many ailings, an enlarged spleen, and for this splenic enlargement I gave the mother tincture of Urtica urens. I was led to use it from the burning pains as well as the odour.

This lady passed a very large quantity of gravel by the urine while under its influence. I did not attach very much importance to this, as patient was in the habit of passing consider-able quantities of gravel with her motions, localised abdominal pain generally preceding such an occur¬rence by a number of days. She was in the habit of indicating a spot just under her spleen as her "gravel-pit.".

But when I observed others who, being under the influ¬ence of Urtica urens, passed grit and gravel pretty freely for the first time in their lives, I came to the conclusion that the Urtica possesses the power of eliminating the urates from the economy.;--- And it slowly became clear to my-mind that Urtica might be the very remedy I had long been in quest of, viz., a quickly-acting, easily-obtained homoeo¬pathic remedy for the Attacks of gout, or some of them, for of course we, of experience, never expect uni¬form results any more than we ex¬pect all the trees in a forest to be of the same height.

I subsequently be-came aware that Urtica wens is contingently capable of producing fever, as some subsequent experi¬ence will show. The fever of the gouty attack is not great, bul still feverishness is a part of such at-tacks, and I should not feel sure of of the homoeopathicity of a remedy thereto did it not possess the symp¬tom "fever" in its pathogenesis. I then proceded to employ the Utica urens in the classic attacks of genuine gouty, and that with very great satisfaction indeed. Within a few 'hours after beginning its use the urine becomes fairly free, of a high colour, and the bottom of the vessel is often found more or less covered with orates in the form of grit and gravel, and simul¬taneously herewith the gouty attack begins to subside.* I call the dis¬covery, of this gravel-expelling power of Urtica - well, it has been great to me in my clinical work, and my patients are generally benefit.

From J.Compton Burnett M.D. Gout and its Cure