GOUT, THE

The Gout has always been a complex metaphor, positively conjuring up success and wealth but negatively implying overindulgence and waste. Regardless of its slant, the metaphor always comes first; the condition plays second fiddle. Scientific advancements over some three hundred and fifty years have eventually condensed the broad concept of "the Gout" into a well-understood disease. The book traces how this process enabled an eventual transition from ineffective to effective therapies, addresses the age-old nature versus nurture conundrum of susceptibility, and considers how ordinary people would have been (mis)informed by doctors, scientists, newspapers, and advertisements.

With our modern understanding and solutions, gout should be uncommon today; paradoxically, it is enjoying a renaissance. Now, it is the outcome of poor as well as rich living due to the ill health created by the corporate global economy - a close cousin of obesity, type II diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. Investigating "the Gout" provides a microcosm not only of our social and medical history, but of our present and rapidly changing world.