GOUT. 227 



Besides causing apoplexy and paralysis, this diseased 

 condition of the blood-vessels in the brain often causes 

 mental disorder, not seldom terminating in complete 

 dementia. 



Although gout seldom attacks the female, it is 

 frequently transmitted through the female to the 

 males of the next generation ; consequently it is of 

 great importance that the man who has inherited a 

 predisposition to gout should not marry the daughter 

 of a gouty family, for in doing so he makes it doubly 

 certain that the children shall inherit the disease ten- 

 dency, and that in an aggravated form. Of course 

 all men should avoid alliance with the scrofulous 

 and the rheumatic, but with those* of the gouty 

 diathesis such an alliance is specially dangerous to 

 the offspring, who will probably develop painful and 

 deforming diseases of the bony framework of the 

 body. 



Again, the man who has inherited a tendency to 

 gout, besides marrying a healthy woman, should, 

 if he marry at all, marry young, for he thereby, as 

 Sir Spencer Wells has shown, vastly reduces the 

 chances of his children inheriting the disease tendency 

 in all its strength. Indeed, if the gouty were to 

 unite only with the untainted, and children were only 

 begotten prior to the outbreak of the disease in the 

 parent, it is probable that, with attention to dieting 

 and exercise, the disease tendency might eventually 

 be eradicated, even in families where it has " run ' 

 for many generations. 



