220 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



good example is given by Sir Alfred Garrod, who 

 writes : " A few years since, I was consulted by a 

 gentleman labouring under a severe form of gout 

 with chalk-stones, and although not more than fifty 

 years old, he had suffered from the disease for a long 

 period. On inquiry, I ascertained that for upwards 

 of four centuries the eldest son of the family had 

 invariably been afflicted with gout when he came 

 into possession of the family estate." * This fact 

 might be taken as going strongly to disprove my 

 assertion that the predisposition to gout, like every 

 other hereditary pathological character, is a true 

 family degeneration. It might be argued, that if 

 it were a progressive degeneration, the necessarily 

 fatal type must be attained, and the family become 

 extinct, before the lapse of such time as it has been 

 known to run in families like that mentioned above ; 

 and were gout governed by the rule which guides 

 the neurotic, cancerous, scrofulous, and some other 

 family degenerations, this argument would be good. 

 In this, however, gout is peculiar, that it is not 

 nearly so rapidly built up as other family degenera- 

 tions, and consequently is longer in reaching the 

 fatal type. This slowness in its evolution arises 

 principally from two causes, viz., (i.) The mitigation 

 it suffers during the period of infancy and youth in 

 each generation, and (2.) The difficulty with which 

 the female is affected by this form of degeneration. 

 Gout is a disease which, except in cases where 

 " Gout and Rheumatic Gout," by A. B. Garrod, M.D., F.RS. 



