GOUT – INTRODUCTION
Mention gout and people are apt to snigger, yet this common disease is no laughing matter.
My introduction to gout was in the comics of my youth, where the Indian Army colonel with the flushed face had his foot wrapped in a turban and his mood was always irascible.
This comic attitude, unfortunately, still persists, so that the sufferer gets little sympathy. But he himself is also likely to regard it too lightly.
Gout, or podagra, is an ancient disease, being well known even before the time of Hippocrates, the “father of medicine” who lived nearly 500 years before Christ. The list of famous men who have had this disorder reads like an historical Who’s Who.
Gout is mainly a male disease — 20 times as many men get it for every woman sufferer. The first attack usually comes in the forties but it is not unusual in men in their twenties — and it can even occur in children.
The trouble is an inborn error in metabolism — the tendency to gout is inherited.
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Tags: General health