The fanciful views of the humoralists as to the etiology of gout exercised almost undisputed sway up to the latter half of the eighteenth century. At that time the great Scottish physician, Cullen, took up arms against a doctrine which appeared to him unjustifiable in conception and baneful in practice. He inclined to the solidists rather than to the humoralists, claiming that gout was the outcome of a peculiar bodily conformation, and more especially of an affection of the nervous system. While he categorically denied that any _materia peccans_ was the cause of gout, he yet admitted that in prolonged cases a peculiar matter appeared in gouty patients. But, in view of latter day revelations, Cullen, with singular prescience, maintained that the said matter was the _effect_ and not the cause of gout. Albeit, notwithstanding the almost universal deference accorded to Cullen, his theory, promulgated in 1874, though previously adumbrated by Stahl and afterwards reinforced by Henle, secured but few adherents. The source of this was not far to seek. For ever since the discovery of uric acid by Scheele in 1776, and its detection in tophi by Wollaston, an increasing body of opinion inclined to the view, that in some obscure way the life history of gout was bound up with that of _uric acid_. Still, despite able advocacy in this country by Sir Henry Holland, Wollaston, and others, not to mention Continental authorities, such as Cruveilhier, it was felt that scientific proof of the truth of their contention was still lacking. But not for long were they left in doubt. For, in 1848, Sir Alfred Garrod’s momentous and epoch-making discovery of the presence of _uric acid_ in the _blood_ of the victims of _gout_ allayed all doubts, and seemed then and for long after an all-sufficient explanation of the protean manifestations of the disease. This distinguished physician enunciated his views in a series of propositions which embodied the result of his researches and incidentally laid the foundations of the _uric acid_ theory. GARROD’S THEORY This great physician held that, in true gout, uric acid in the form of urate of soda was, both prior to and during an attack, invariably present in the _blood in abnormal quantities_, and was moreover essential to its production; but with this reservation, that occasionally for a short time uric acid might be present in the circulating fluid without exciting inflammatory symptoms. This comparably with what obtains in _lead poisoning_, and on this account therefore he did not claim that the mere presence of uric acid therein would explain the occurrence of the gouty paroxysm.