222 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



tion. First, it is inherited in a mitigated form ; and 

 second, it is, so to speak, being lived down during 

 the first twenty-five years of life. In the neurotic, 

 the scrofulous, and some other hereditary degenera- 

 tions, special opportunities for their development are 

 offered during the early years of life, whereas in gout 

 the tendency is materially reduced during that period. 

 As to the second cause given above of the slow 

 evolution of gout, viz., the difficulty in strongly in- 

 fecting the female with the predisposition, I would 

 venture to say it is not yet clearly understood. 

 Women certainly do not subject themselves to the 

 same extent to predisposing causes as do men. They 

 indulge less freely in the pleasures of the table, 

 whether of luxuries solid or fluid, and it is rarely that 

 their digestive powers are anything like equal to those 

 of their male relatives. Yet all this will not account 

 for the strange fact of every- day occurrence, that a 

 younger daughter of a family strongly predisposed 

 to gout, and whose brothers, elder and younger, one 

 after another develop the disease, will show no dis- 

 position to follow their example. She has inherited 

 the taint, yet she does not develop the disease. So 

 long ago as the time of Hippocrates it was suggested 

 that the catamenial losses experienced by women 

 acted as a safety-valve for the gout poison, and that 

 there is truth in this supposition of the ancients is not 

 doubted in the present day. Unfortunately in* these 

 later days woman is fast losing her old-time exemption 

 from this disease. As she apes man in his worst as 



