HISTORY.--The records of medicine furnish simple evidence of the prevalence of gout in all ancient as well as in modern civilized communities. Its origin in the perversion of physiological functions was as clearly recognized by the prophets of the old testament of the medical art as it is by the founders of the gospel of modern science. The refined processes of animal chemistry have simply revealed the materies morbi which was foreshadowed in the "peccant matters" of the humoralists, which were supposed to be distilled into the joints and other structures, provoking inflammation and tophous deposits. This is the most notable and interesting fact in the history of gout, that it has from the earliest times been regarded as a specific form of arthritis and dependent upon the circulation in the blood of peccant matter. It was not, however, until the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Murray Forbes, and a few years later Wollaston, called attention to the fact that uric acid was the chief ingredient in urinary calculi and in tophous deposits, that our knowledge of the pathology of gout may be said to have had its beginning. The demonstration by Garrod, in 1848, of the presence of lithate of soda in the blood of gouty persons, also marks an era in the history of the pathology of gout. While the humoralistic theory of gout has prevailed almost to the exclusion of all others, it is historically interesting to note that the views of the solidists, as represented by Cullen, who maintained that "gout was an affection of the nervous system in which the primary moving powers of the whole system are lodged," have been recently revived and are attracting considerable attention. ETIOLOGY: PREDISPOSING CAUSES.--Heredity may be regarded as the most prominent of the predisposing causes of gout. Statistics of arthritic gout show this tendency in a varying but always large proportion of cases. Scudamore observed it in nearly 60 per cent. of his cases; Garrod, in 50 per cent. of his hospital cases and, in a much larger proportion, in his private practice; Gairdner found it in 140 out of 156 cases. If all the manifestations of the gouty vice were taken into consideration in determining the influence of heredity, it would doubtless be shown in a still larger percentage of cases.