GOUT AND GENIUS

Southland Times, Issue 23408, 15 January 1938, Page 12

GOUT AND GENIUS

Ailment With Literary Associations When an attack of gout prevented Britain’s Prime Minister from attending the opening of Parliament recently, Robert Lynd saw a fit subject for one of his Saturday essays in the News Chronicle. “It is to be hoped," fre wrote, “that the Prime Minister . . . had someone near him to cheer him up with the reminder of the close association between gout and genius.”

Mr Havelock Ellis, in his “Study of British Genius,” points out that gout is the disease most commonly mentioned in the lives of men thought great enough to be included in the “Dictionary of National Biography.” No fewer than 5 per cent, of the eminent men admitted to the “Dictionary” are said to have suffered from gout. And the list of the gouty includes many of the supreme figures in the collection. The two greatest English men of science, Newton and Darwin, suffered from gout as did Harvey and Sydenham.

Mil ton, Gibbon, Fielding and Johnson were all afflicted with the same disease, and, we are told, “the Bacons were a gouty family.” In the world of religious genius, John Wesley was a victim of gout, and among statesmen, both the elder and the younger Pitt were constantly laid low by it. “It would probably be impossible,” writes Mr Ellis, “to match the group of gouty men of genius, for varied and pre-eminent intellectual ability, by any combinations of nongouty individuals.” As one reads Mr Ellis, one can hardly help feeling that any young man setting out to be a genius would be well advised to begin by doing his utmost to bring on an attack of gout. It is only fair to aspiring genius, however, to warn it that though “there is a real connection between gout and genius,” gout does not inevitably produce genius. The genius has to be there first: all that the gout can do is to spur it into activity. A STIMULANT For the poison that produces gout is not only an irritant but a stimulant. “When it is in the victim’s blood, his brain becomes abnormally overclouded, if not intoxicated. When it is in his joints his mind becomes abnormally clear and vigorous.” Thus, it is explained, “the man liable to attacks of gout is able to see the world from two entirely different points of view: he has, as it were, two brains at his disposal... His mind thus attains a greater mental vigour and acuteness than the more equable mind of the non-gouty subject.” It was at one time thought that gout was one of Nature’s punishments for excessive eating and drinking and for a too sedentary life. But it is now recognized that, however bad for the victim of gout rich dishes and wines may be, gout does not always spare the abstemious and the livers of the simple life, if they happen to be men of sufficient ability. Nor are the leaders of sedentary lives its commonest victims. A doctor is quoted as saying in the present century: “The gouty patients that I have seen have, I should say in the majority of instances, been extremely active and energetic people, and it is often extremely difficult to get them to take sufficient rest.” It is recorded that on one occasion a gouty competitor, in an interval between attacks, won the race in the Olympic Games. Gout is, of course, only one of the diseases that seem to have had an in-, fluence for positive good on men of genius. We might never have had the

Waverley Novels if Walter Scott had not had a crippling illness in his childhood, and we have only to read the lives of men of genius to see what an influential part illness played in the destinies of many of them. “At least 10 per cent, of our eminent British persons,” says Mr Ellis, “suffered from a marked degree of ill-health, amounting to more than minor discomfort, during the years of their active lives.”

■ Even eminent divines, so many of whom look like old Blues when they have attained to the Bishop’s bench, are not immune. Galton indeed noted “the prevalence of ill-health among divines” and concluded from his investigations that there is “a frequent correlation between an unusually devout disposition and a weak constitution.” He should have lived to see the present Bishop of London. I sometimes wonder whether the world does not prefer its great men to “enjoy bad health.” I cannot help thinking that Browning’s reputation as a poet suffered from his having been so offensively robust. There are still people who cannot forgive him for 1 having been so eupeptic. Given an equal amount of genius, I fancy, a dyspeptic author will as a rule be taken more seriously than another who has never had a day’s illness in his life. THE “DIVINE DISCONTENT” Not that there are many great writers who have never had a day’s illness. I have heard it maintained that a man in perpetual good health suffers too little from what is called “divine discontent” to want to pour his soul out on paper. To say this is not to suggest that writers of genius are necessarily weaklings. On the contrary, they are commonly men of stronger constitutions than the average. It is only a man of strong constitution who could have written “Paradise Lost.” And most of the English novelists have been men of exceptional energy. Even so, there are a good many reasons for not being envious of men of genius. Apart from their liability to various forms of ill-health, many of them are afflicted with all kinds of awkwardness—are clumsy, we are told, “in the use of their hands, and awkward in their walking.” “Macaulay could not wield a razor or even tie his own neck-cloth. Shelley, though lithe and active, was always tumbling upstairs or tripping on smooth lawns.”

It is possible that, in the course of the national campaign for physical fitness, the authorities may discover some means of producing the perfect athletic body, without discouraging genius; but, if we may judge from Mr Ellis’s book, it will be a hard job. But let them proceed warily. Healthier ways of living have already diminished the prevalence of gout, and has not genius diminished at an equal pace?

It is a terrifying thought that if the medical profession ultimately succeeds in abolishing gout, it may be robbing posterity of another “Paradise Lost” and another “Boswell.”