Within the past decade serious investigators of arthritis have been unanimous in emphasizing the fact that the foundation for the successful management of chronic arthritis, like that for tuberculosis, is a broad and comprehensive program of treatment. Many allied therapeutic measures, headed by the judicious application of rest, are required. From time to time, nevertheless, newer modes of therapy are brought forth; they have their ardent exponents and, later, equally earnest and capable antagonists, and for varying periods each enjoys a vogue as a possible "specific" treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.
These measures have in the main been difficult to evaluate. One reason for this difficulty is the lack of control studies by those initiating a new form of treatment in arthritis. The fact that rheumatoid arthritis may be a self-limited disease, certainly one subject to spontaneous remissions, further complicates any individual physician's efforts to achieve balanced judgment with regard to