“But nothing,” as Sir Thomas Watson says, “can show more strongly the power of fashion than this desire to be thought to possess, not only the tone and manners of the higher orders of society, not their follies merely and pleasant vices, but their very pains and aches, their bodily imperfections and infirmities. All this is more than sufficiently ludicrous and lamentable, but so it is. Even the philosophic Sydenham consoled himself under the sufferings of the gout with the reflection that it destroys more rich men than poor, more wise men than fools.” “At vero (quod mihi aliisque licet, tam fortunæ quam Ingenii dotibus mediocriter instructis, hoc morbo laborantibus solatio esse possit) ita vixerunt atque ita tandem mortem obierunt magni Reges, Dynastæ, exercituum classiumque Duces, Philosophi, aliique his similes haud pauci. “Verbo dicam, articularis hicce morbus (quod vix de quovis alio adfirmaveris) divites plures interemit quam pauperes, plures sapientes quam fatuos.” The Scotch at one time regarded gout as fit and meet punishment for the luxurious living of the English. But, as was pointed out, the cogency of the moral was somewhat spoilt by the fact that the disorder was found to exist even among the poor and temperate Faroe Islanders. In truth, although “the taint may be hereditary, it may be generated by a low diet and abstinence carried to extremes.” THAT GOUT CONFERS IMMUNITY FROM OTHER DISORDERS The fallacy that longevity and freedom from other maladies was ensured by gout was prevalent among our forefathers. In satire of this, one Philander Misaurus issued a brochure entitled “The Honour of the Gout,” and purporting to be writ, “Right in the Heat of a violent Paroxysm; and now publish’d for the common Good” (1735). “Bless us,” says he, “that any man should wish to be rid of the Gout; for want of which he may become obnoxious to fevers and headache, be blinded in his understanding, loose the best of his Health and the Security of his Life”; and forthwith in his zeal for the common good gives us the following invocation:— “Blessed Gout, most desirable Gout, Sovereign Antidote Of murdering Maladies; powerful corrector of Intemperance; Deign to visit me with thy purging Fires, and throw off the Tophous Injury which I may have suffer’d by Wine and Wit, Too hard for the Virtue of a Devotee upon a Holy Festival. But fail not thy humble Supplicant, who needs thy Friendly Help, to keep his tottering Tenement in Order: Fail him not, every Vernal and Autumnal Æquinox.” He quaintly suggests that Paracelsus, if he would ensure men against death, had but to inoculate them with gout. Gout, indeed, was held to be a jealous disorder, intolerant of usurpation by any other disease, recalling the remark of Posthumus to his gaolers:—