GOUT. 225 



In fact, anything requiring expenditure of nervous 

 energy and calling upon the stock of reserve vitality 

 finds the account overdrawn, and so causes a tem- 

 porary or permanent health bankruptcy. 



The degenerate condition of the gouty parent is 

 also marked in many instances in his children, more 

 especially those begotten late in life. These not seldom 

 present the scrofulous diathesis more or less deeply 

 marked, or, short of this, they are feeble generally, 

 enjoy only precarious health, and are short-lived. 



The old idea that the gouty are specially long- 

 lived, and are also endowed with more than the 

 ordinary quantum of intelligence, is diametrically 

 opposed to the truth. Certainly some of the gouty 

 live to be old, but for every one who does, scores 

 die comparatively young because of their inherited 

 disease tendency ; while against every gouty one 

 who holds a proud place in the intellectual world 

 might be placed a crowd of fellow- sufferers made up 

 of coal-heavers, publicans, broken-down butlers and 

 brewer's men, who lay no claim to the intellectual ; or 

 even of scions of noble houses once known to fame, 

 but now, alas ! only forming that remnant of the 

 decaying aristocracy which the democratic reformer 

 delights in holding up to ridicule. 



The following history of a gouty family, which I 

 borrow from Sir Alfred Garrod, will at once dispose 

 of the foolish idea that gout seldom proves fatal, and 

 then only in extreme old age. He describes his 

 patient thus : " A gentleman forty-eight years of 



