GOUT. 217 



food off is not taken, hence the organs whose business 

 it is to cast out of the system effete matters have a 

 strain put upon them. This strain sooner or later 

 causes disorder of those organs, which further compli- 

 cates matters, and soon leads to retention within the 

 system of matters offensive to health. The kidneys 

 are the great blood-cleansers, and these organs are 

 more or less diseased in every case of gout. 



Abernethy's receipt for the cure of gout, " Live on 

 sixpence a day and earn it," still holds good, and if 

 the humble coin have been earned by honest, healthy, 

 physical toil, I care not whether it be expended upon 

 steak and kidney-pie or upon potatoes and milk. 

 In neither case will the input of material exceed that 

 needful as a force-producer, and so no accumulation 

 can arise to clog the system. I admit that the 

 glutton may be more likely to overload the system, 

 feeding upon rich dishes of animal food, than feeding 

 upon the less succulent yet no less rich vegetables. 

 But if the rising generation of vegetarian cooks can 

 produce equally seductive dishes with those who go 

 for ingredients to the animal world as vegetarians 

 boast they can I fail to see salvation for the gouty 

 gourmand in vegetarianism.* 



Gout, then, is essentially a disease of civilisation. 



* Since the above was written, Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, in his 

 "Archives of Surgery," No. I, vol. iii., has forbidden the use of 

 fruit to all patients having a tendency to gout. The contained 

 sugar is, of course, the deleterious agent. The more sugar a fruit 

 contain the more hurtful is it. Cooked fruit eaten with added 

 sugar is specially dangerous. 

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