While subjects of gout have told me that they had had an attack in their teens, I have never myself seen an instance. Still less can I claim to have seen what I felt justified in calling “gout” in children. On the other hand, if, as one authority states, “tonsillitis (quinsy), enlarged tonsils, granular states of the pharynx, and catarrhal conditions of the throat and respiratory mucous membranes are not infrequent expressions of gouty inheritance in children,” then, of course, all of us must be quite familiar with “infantile gout.” But even this formidable list of legacies from gouty parents is eclipsed by a more recent writer, J. Comby (1902), who, discussing “infantile arthritism,” divides children coming of gouty stock into two types: the “lymphatic” and “nervous.” The children of the former class suffer from fleeting swelling of the lymphatic glands, rhino-pharyngitis, tonsillitis, and, if they be girls, from chlorosis. Also they are given markedly to tachycardia, bradycardia, and vasomotor ataxia. They are also especially liable to asthma and the crises of dyspnœa, and pulmonary congestion may alternate with urticarial and eczematous eruptions. Truly, their lot is hard, for they fall a ready prey to colic, constipation, all varieties of dyspepsia, not to mention nocturnal and diurnal enuresis! Comby also claims that these gouty children are especially liable to recurrent or _cyclical vomiting_. In this matter he is confirmed by J. Thomson, who noted that these children not infrequently give a history of having had asthma, urticaria, eczema, stammering, and other nervous complaints, also that in many instances _uric acid crystals_ or a copious deposit of _urates_ have been noted in their urine. As to the “nervous” type, they labour with insomnia, night terrors, convulsions, and when older with migraine. To these liabilities must be added undue proneness to acne, seborrhœa, psoriasis, chilblains, angio-neurotic œdema, urticaria, etc., not to mention muscular and joint aches and pains. Whether this medley of distempers can with any pretensions to scientific reason be affiliated to a gouty heritage, or whether they can be regarded as expressions of a budding “gouty diathesis,” is, I submit, of the nature of pure speculation. That the child who suffers with cyclical vomiting may show uric acid crystals or urates in his urine is certainly no proof that he has inherited gout, much less that he is actually “gouty.” In uro-lithiasis the uric acid is precipitated in the urinary passages, viz., strictly speaking, _outside_ the body, whereas in _gout_ the pathological error originates _within_ the organism. More apposite is Uffenheimer’s observation, previously noted, that children of this type suffer the same disturbances of _purin_ metabolism as are met with in adult gouty subjects.