The Real Blessings of Gout.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 932, 10 January 1890, Page 9

The Real Blessings of Gout.

(All the Year Round.) This tiresome disease is sometimes looked upon as a penalty for the luxurious living of comparatively modern days; but, as a matter of fact, it has afflicted man from the earliest times. Not long ago a mummy was unwound in Egypt, which was shown by inscriptions to be the mortal remains of one of the Pharaohs, and the knotted fingers proved incontestably that this monarch—who reigned 3,000 years ago—was a victim to gout. The Romans, we know from several passages in their literature, were no Btrangers to its attacks ; and in their times, as in ours, it was largely attributed to high living. A curious fact in connection with gout, in the days of the Caesars, is that it is said to to have then found its victims chiefly among the weaker sex, who nowadays

are comparatively free from it. The writings of Galen, Hippocrates, and other Greek physioians show that gout was as common in ancient Greece as in her great Latin rival. Galen said of it that it was a distemper which none but the gods could cure—an op nion that must be shared by many who have tried in vain to obtain relief from its twinges. The doctor who deserves the monument as high as St. Paul’s, as wide ns the Thames, and as enduring as time - which Dr. Johnston declared awaited him who found a cure for gout —is still to com?, for though its attacks may be modi tied by regulating the diet and taking abundant exercise, no one has yet been able to prove himself a master of the art of healing this most difficult of the many difficult diseases to which flesh is heir.

The variety of the remedies rocon. mended for a complaint is a nure iudex of its susceptibility to treatment ; and at ono time or another the dodtora have professed themselves to be believers in almost every conceivable method for neutralising the effects of this one. It has been a'tricked with acids and with akalies, with fire and water; cauterisation having been once the favourite form of remedy for it, as aqua pura was iu the early days of this century. Dr. Sydenham, the renowned English physician of the seventeenth century, who knew by painful experience what gout was, declares it t? be almost the only d’sease which destroys more rich men than poor men, more men of great intellect than men of ordinary capacity and understanding. He Bhys : ‘ Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals, and philosophers have all died of gout Hereby Nature shows her impartiality, since those whom she favours in one way she inflicts iu another.' Gout is, in short, according' to this authority, one of the revenges of good fortune and plenty ; but however true this may have been in Sydenham’s time, the ailment is more democratic now, and shows no such nice distinction of class. Labourers who keep away from the beer-shop are hardly ever attacked by it: hut over-indulgence in malt liquors is one of the surest passports to gout; and the life of fresh air and exercise, which is, broadly, so antagonistic to this Boourge of mankind, is powerless against its ravages unless accompanied by moderate abstinence from this particular beverage, Brain-workers who, though enjoying good health, do not take much exercise, are most subject to gout It is a curious faot that the poorer Irish, who live to a large extent upon potatoes, are said to be absolutely free from its attacks.

Gout is undeniably on the inorease in this country ; and this fact has been put forward as an evidence of our growing wealth and prosperity. A nation must bs prosperous to maintain any considerable proportion of its inhabitants in the luxury of gout. Taere is no country in the world where gout is so common as in ours, owing, no doubt, to the largeness of our leisure class, who do little but eat and drink and endure consequent twinge 3. Ifc is popularly ■ believed that gout shares with asthma the facultyof lengthening the lives of those whom it favours with its attentions, chiefly because it allows no other disease to dispute its sovereignty. A famous French physician reached the age of a hundred, and for sixty years cf his life was subject to gout; and many others who have attained great age have been martyrs to it. There is not ailment for which so little sympathy is accorded as for this. The gouty old gentleman is one of the mainstays of the bumerisfc ; but few who have not been subjected to it realise the dreadful agony that the victim to this disease is called upon to endure. No donbt the prevalence of gout is to a great extent to be accounted for by the tendency that it has to descend from father to son. Dr Garrod related that he was ouco consulted by a patient who told him that his famil records showed that every representative of his house had fallen into its clutches for the last 400 years. No doubt this was an extreme case, for the tendency of gout to skip a generation is one of its most widely recognised attributes. It is supposed that considerably more than half of all oases of gout are hereditary. Horace Walpole professed himself to be very much hurt at the conduct of gout in selecting him as one of its victims, though his ancestors had been free from it, and he himself had always led an extremely abstemious life. ‘ It either my father or mother had had it,’ is his remark, ‘I should not dislike it so much. I am herald enough to approve of it if descended gen> alogically ; but it is an absolute upstart in me ; and, what is more provoking, I had trusted to my great abstinence for keeping me from it ; but thus it is. If I had any gentlemanlike virtue, as patriotismor loyalty, I might have got something by them. I bad nothing but that beggarly virtue, temperance, and sh 3 had not interest enough to keep me from a fit of the gout.’ A curious little book in honour of the gout was written by one Misaurns. whose object was to show it to be a blessing for which mannkind could not be sufficiently thankful. His first task was to set forth the antiquity of his subject, which he does by declaring it to be somewhat younger than the fall of our first parents, and sent down from heaven merci ■ fully to lengthen the lives forfeited by their transgressions. He then proceeds to give six good and oufficient reasons why gout should be hailed as a blessing. Firstly, he says, it gives man pain without danger. Secondly, that it gives those whom it distinguishes by its favours intervals in which they may experience to the full the enjoyment of health, that never falls to the lot of ttose wbo accomplish their earthly pilgrimage without its companionship. Further he lauds it as a weather guide, beside which barometers are worthless, and predicts that the day will come when no shipowner will consider his vessel safe unless it is under the command of a gouty captain. Fourthly, he avers that gouty people are free from head-ache. Fifthly, that they are not subject to fevers. And sixthly, that gout is incurable. Our gout defender does not go so far as to declare that his pet ailment renders man immortal ; but he does say that, if ever anyone has had the art of preserving himself or others from the shafts of the great destroyer, his secret has lain in the power of inoculating with gout. The objection that gouty people die, like other less favoured mortals, is met by tha remark that they ar©

idiots, who know not when they are well off, but must need attempt to cure the gout, which, if left alone, would preserve them. The heat of the tropics seems to be in some mysterious way antagonistic to this disease* which is far oftener met with in temperate latitudes than nearer the equator, and is more prevalent in autumn and winter than iu the summer.