Gout: the patrician Maldy

Gout has fascinated medical writers and cultural commentators from the time of ancient Greece. Historically seen as a disease, afflicting upper-class males of superior wit, genius, and creativity, it has numbered among its sufferes Erasmus, the Medici, Edward Gibbon, Samuel Johnson, Immanuel Kant and Robert Browning. Gout has also been the subject of powerful medical folklore, viewed as a disease that protects its sufferers and assures long life. This dazzlingly insightful and readable book investigates the full history of gout and through it offers a new perspective on medical and social history, sex, prejudice and class, and explains why gout was viewed as gender specific.