"RECIPES FOR MAKING GOUT."

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8335, 11 April 1889, Page 4

"RECIPES FOR MAKING GOUT."

|. " Under this title, an English _ society ] ' journal, having exhausted, and it infers ' .without avail, its best advice as to the ■'. .prevention of this dread malady, lays before its epicurean readers some specimen compounds peculiarly adapted to develop ' . gout in those previously free, and to excite ' ' ■' its most virulent symptoms in the already j '• afflicted.' It has medical authority for its i promise that the recipes it gives are really ' ■ among the most exciting causes yet dis- . covered in scientific or even what might ' be called haphazard cuisine; taking no j accouct of the lesser causes, no doubt ] ' crediting the gouty with sufficient intelligence to forsee the effect upon the i metatarsophalangeal joint ot the great toe of the midnight lobster and the afterdinner port. It introduces a certain Dr. . ' Hunter, whom it seems to regard as an authority on gout, and one can almost see ■ a testy little doctor, rotund, red-faced, . • short-winded with good living, and knowing his subject from sensation as well as . study, aa he takes up a famous cookery . nianunl and reads: "Giblet soup, par ' excellence ; veal stock, lemons, yolk of egg, forced meat balls, and Madeira." _ . This, he says, contains a considerable ! amount of gout and scurvy. Of an un- * usually rich mock- turtle soup, he says: ■" A dangerous dish, and will soon bring a man to his crutches." Another of the ' same he declares most diabolical— only fit for the Sunday dinner of a rustic who is , to work the six following days in a ditch bottom ; while of a third, mock-turtle soup made with beet, ham, giblets, lemonpeel, truffles, eggs, orange- juice, forced meat, and Madeira— a dish much admired by the patrons of a famous London res- ' taurateur— the doctor says testily: "There , is death in the pot. " f- It has often observed of those afflicted , ; : with gout— the tone of the letters addressed to the society journal in question furnishes still another evidence of it — ' that they appear more concerned to discover new remedies to lessen the pain when they shall be again attacked than in adopting a practical means for prevent irig its recurrence. They try colcbicum, - soothing topical applications, acetate of potash and other alkalies, and perhaps nitro-muriatic acid, the latter for supply- ■ ing the oxygen necessary for the conversion of the excess of uric acid from ', ■which they are suffering into oxalic acid, .. ' and the latter into carbonic acid and urea — always with the hope, so it would seem, ■ of accomplishing by chemistry what regu- . > lar habits, air, and exercise would ordi- ~' narily yield.