i8o 



assumption, based on the thinnest of analogies, and 

 upon the fact that (for a reason to be presently ex- 

 plained) the bird is most often one of the soft bills, 

 the prime cause is almost always asserted to be the 

 use of mealworms as an article of diet. The argument 

 is this. We believe that human gout is a disease 

 dependant upon a perverted metabolism, and that it is 

 associated with the existence of an excess of uric acid 

 in the blood, and of the resulting deposits of bi-urate 

 of soda in the tissues, more particularly the joints. 

 We also believe that in this condition a highly nitro- 

 genous diet is contra-indicated. We are also accus- 

 tomed to find in typical cases a certain amount of 

 inflammatory swelling in the joints, especially in those 

 of the feet. When therefore the foot of a cage bird is 

 swollen, especially, as I have said, if it happens to be 

 a soft bill, we immediately assume his disease to be 

 gout and the cause to be mealworms — as analogous to 

 the butcher's meat of the human. One physician 

 indeed has lately advanced a speculative theory that 

 human gout is a bacterial disease, solely on the 

 evidence of one fowl, (which, as shown in his paper, 

 presented a perfect picture of Avian Septicaemia to 

 anyone who has worked at avian pathology), because he 

 found crystals of uric acid in the kidney ! Consider- 

 ing that the urine of birds contains only a degree 

 less of this substance than that of serpents, which 

 is practically all uric acid (and therefore contains 

 about a thousand times more than that of man) it 

 would have been remarkable had he not found it 

 present in that situation under any circumstances. 



As a matter of fact these cases of "gout" met 

 with in our cage birds are just cases of more or less 

 localized septic poisoning of a comparatively mild and 

 subacute form. A bird gets a minute crack in the fold 

 of one of the joints of his toes. The cage floor 

 swarms with septic bacteria, bred and fostered in the 

 occupant's excreta. These effect an entrance into the 



