Thus, out of 482 males the victims of gout, eighty-one were cabmen, coachmen, grooms, stablemen, and bus drivers; fifty-one were draymen, publicans, barmen, cellarmen, potmen, innkeepers, maltsters, coopers, storekeepers, brewers’ travellers, and brewers’ labourers; twenty-five butlers, men servants, ship’s stewards, and hotel servants; while forty-five were labourers, and of the residue, although all kinds of trades and occupations were represented, yet no other class reached ten in number. Of these various stations and occupations, it cannot be held that, in themselves, these callings necessarily contain the “seeds of the gout.” The banefulness resides in the _associated habits of living_; for but too frequently repletion, intemperance, and indolence go hand in hand with these vocations. In other words, dietetic excesses, overloaded intestines, and too much alcohol, what more likely to impair the digestive functions, to increase the toxicity of the intestinal flora, and in turn to upset the equilibrium of general nuclein metabolism, with its associated specific local reaction in certain tissues? _Mental and Physical Over-exertion, etc._—Sydenham said of gout that it destroys “more wise men than fools,” and in a letter to Dr. Short, he complains, “I send you a short tract upon Gout and Dropsy instead of the thicker volume, which in my own mind I had determined on, viz., a history of such chronic diseases as my practice has most especially met with. By applying my mind, however, to its utmost, and by bringing all my powers of thought on the subject, I brought on a fit of gout, such as I had never before suffered from; so that the fact itself warned me to lay aside, even against my own will, such lucubrations, and to take care of myself; well satisfied with having, in some measure, dealt with these two diseases. Whenever I returned to my studies, gout returned to me.” It is doubtful if, in the absence of an _hereditary_ proclivity, intellectual strain would promote the development of gout. On the other hand, there is, I think, no doubt that immoderate mental exertion will indirectly precipitate an outbreak. I can well understand that the illustrious Sydenham, absorbed in his life study, forgot to take a normal amount of exercise. Perhaps, like the renowned Jenner, he would have said, “I never walk at all except from my house into my carriage. I hate walking, and if I could, I would get my servants to carry me to bed.” Nevertheless, I doubt not that Sydenham’s intellectual efforts necessarily entailed sedentary habits, which brought in their wake digestive and intestinal derangements, whence his occasional gouty outbreaks.