Gout: The Patrician Malady

403 Pages·1998·20.844 MB·English

by  Dr. Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau

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GOUT
The Patrician Malady
Roy Porter and G. S. Rousseau
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Yale University Press
New Haven and London
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Copyright © 1998 by Roy Porter and G. S. Rousseau
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of
the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press)
without written permission from the publishers.
Set in Bembo by Best-set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong
Printed in Great Britain
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Porter, Roy, 1946-
~p.'! Gout: the patrician malady/ Roy Porter and G.S. Rousseau.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-07386-0 (cloth)
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1. Gout - History. I. Rousseau. G. S. (George Sebastian) 11. Title.
RC629.P67 1998
616.3'999'009 - dc2t 98-16881
CIP
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
2468 10 9753 1
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Next Gout appears with limping pace,
Pleads how he shifts from place to place,
From head to foot how swift he flies,
And ev’ry joint and sinew plys,
Still working when he seems supprest,
A most tenacious stubborn guest.
John Gay, Fable XLVII, from The Poems of John Cay, ed. V. A. Dearing
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 364-5
was he Free from the Pain This [the gout] gave him, his Blindness would be
Tolerable.
John Milton, as reported by Jonathan Richardson: Helen Darbishire, ed.,
The Early Lives of Milton (London: Constable, 1932), 203-4
Full soon the sad effect of this [port wine]
His frame began to show,
For that old enemy the gout
Had taken him in toe!
Thomas Hood, ‘Lieutenant Lough’, in Walter Jerrold, ed., The Complete
Poetical Works of Thomas Hood (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), 204
In the happy moment of mirth and conviviality, and the mad career of dissipation,
an epicure, or a voluptuary, little dreams of the gout; which hangs over his head,
like the sword of Damocles, and threatens his destruction. Amid the joys of wine,
and the shouts of the Bacchanals, the still voice of reason is not heard; the sober
dictates of discretion are disregarded; and the friendly warnings of the physician are
either totally forgotten, or treated with ridicule and contempt.
John Ring, A Treatise on the Gout (London: Callow, 1811), 3
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Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
i. Introduction i
HISTORIES
2. The Classical Inheritance 13
3- Prometheus’s Vulture: The Renaissance Fashioning of Gout 22
4- Science and Sydenham 36
5- Die Eighteenth-Century Medical Debates 48
CULTURES
6. Gout and the Georgian Gentleman 71
7- Smollett, Cadogan and Controversy 93
8. Change and Continuity, 1790—1850 125
9- Indian Summer: Romantic and Victorian Gout 143
10. Gout and Glory: Garrod and After 173
GOUTOMETRIES
ii. Podagra Ludens: Disease and Discourse 211
I. Podagra ludens: Ludic representations 211
II. The Lucianic and Menippean heritage 213
III. The rhetoric of swelling 216
IV. Homo ludens and the neo-Lucianic heritage 219
V. The metaphoric heritage 229
12. Gout: The Visual Heritage 248
Epilogue 284
Notes 286
Bibliography 327
Index 380
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Illustrations
i. Title page of Pirckheimer, The Praise of the Gout, Or,
The Gouts Apologie. London, 1617. (Houghton Library,
Harvard University, Mass.) 214
2. Title page of ‘Lucubrationes Podagricae’, c. 1600. (Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Mass.) 220
3- Title page of Robert Witty, Gout Raptures. Cambridge, 1677.
(Houghton Library, Harvard University, Mass.) 220
4- Anonymous broadside, ‘A Wipe for Iter-Boreale Wilde:
Or, An Infallible Cure for the Gout’. London, 1670.
(Houghton Library, Harvard University, Mass.) 221
5- Title page of William Brownsword, Laugh and Lye Down; or, A
pleasant, but sure, Remedy for the Gout, Without Expence or Danger.
London, 1739. (Houghton Library, Harvard University, Mass.) 225
6. Title page of the anonymous ‘Satirical Trifles: Consisting of
An Ode, written on the first Attack of the Gout’. London,
1764. (Houghton Library, Harvard University, Mass.) 226
7- Title page of A Candid and Impartial State of the Evidence of a
Very Great Probability. By Edmund Marshall. Canterbury, 1770.
(Wellcome Institute Historical Library, London) 244
8. Postscript of A Candid and Impartial State. By Edmund Marshall.
Page 79 from the work reproduced in plate 7. (Wellcome
Institute Historical Library, London) 244
9- H. S. Beham. 'Podagrae Ludus’. Black and white print, 1607.
(Warburg Institute, London) 249
10. Vaenius. Gout in Emblemata Horatiana. Black and white print,
1607. (Warburg Institute, London) 250
11. ‘The Marriage Settlement’. One of a series of copies of Hogarth
plates by Davison of Alnwick, 1745. (Huntington Library,
San Marino, Cal.) 251
12. James Gillray, Die Gout, 1799. (Princeton University Gillray
Collection) 254
13- Plate attributed to Joseph H. Seymour, ‘Young woman recoiling
from an old man seated with foot on gout stool’. This is found as
ix
List of Illustrations
X
plate 3 in William Hayley’s The Triumphs of Temper (Newburyport,
Mass., 1794). (American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass.) 255
J. J. Kaendler. ‘Meissen group gathered around the gout sufferer’.
14-
Print. Sotheby’s sale catalogue, 8 July 1969. (Sotheby’s, London) 256
15- Anonymous portrait, ‘Willm. Atkins, Gout Doctor’, c. 1700.
(Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 258
l6. Tide page of Historia podagrae by loanne Godofr. de Hahn.
Published by Arnold Engelbrechti, 1751. (Baylor College of
Medicine, Houston, Tex.) 259
IT- Anonymous print, ‘Gichtkranker Und Tod’, c. 1600. Illustration
• h in an undated volume entided Bildersammlung atts der
*{■ Geschichte der Mediziu. (Countway Library of Medicine,
Boston, Mass.) 259
/ *1 18. Tide page of the anonymous A Caribbee Medicine for the Gout,
Rheumatism And various other Disorders. Boston, 1788. (Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Mass.) 261
19. Tide page of Dolaeus upon the Cure of the Gout by Milk-Diet.
By William Stephens. London, 1732. (Baylor College of Medicine,
Houston, Tex.) 262
20. Thomas Rowlandson, ‘Lieut. Bowling pleading the cause of
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young Rory to his Grandfather’. Illustration from an 1805 edition
’.vS'V of Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random. (Countway Library of
Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 264
21. Isaac or George Cruikshank. ‘Lords of the Creation’. Print. 1796.
(Wellcome Institute Library). 266
22. Isaac or George Cruikshank. ‘Pain and Champagne’. Print. 1826.
(Wellcome Institute Library). 266
23- ‘A Quarrel’. Illustration in the Cornhill Magazine for Thackeray’s
The Adventures of Philip. (Wellcome Institute Library) 267
24. Isaac or George Cruikshank. ‘Nobody laughs at a touch of
the gout’. Cartoon, early nineteenth century. (Wellcome Institute
Library) 267
25. Tide page of Facts and Observations respecting the Air-Pump
Vapour-Bath, in Coat, Rheumatism, Palsy, and other Diseases.
By Ralph Blegborough. London, 1803. (Baylor College of
Medicine, Houston, Tex.) 269
26. Sketch of medical devices used in treatment of gout from a book
dated 1802. (Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Tex.) 269
27- Anonymous print, ‘The Quacks’. London, 1783. (Countway
Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 270
28. Anonymous print, ‘A Valuable Friend’. (Countway Library of
Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 271
29. Anonymous print, ‘A Military Salutation’. c. 1770. (Countway
Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 273
J
List of Illustrations xi
30- Anonymous print, ‘Quae Genus Discovers His Father’, c. 1770.
(Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 274
Si- ‘An Exquisite Taste, with an Enlarged Understanding’. Drawn
by E. Y. Esq. Engraved by G. Hunt. London, 1827. (Countway
Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 275
32. Anonymous print, ‘Geoffrey Gambado Esq’. London,
1786. (Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 276
33- Anonymous, print, ‘Punch Cures the Gout’. 1799. (Countway
Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 278
34- Anonymous, Dissertatioues de laudibtts et effectibus podagrac. 1715.
(Glasgow University, Strathclyde) 279
35- Anonymous print, ‘A Cure for the Gout’. London, early
nineteenth century. (Countway Library of Medicine, Boston,
Mass.) 280
36. A. Buzaglo, A Treatise on the gout. . . . Page 56. London, 1778.
(Wellcome Institute Historical Library, London) 281
37- Anonymous print, ‘Here’s a dreadful situation . . .’. c. 1840.
(Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.) 282
38. Parker & Hunt, ‘How could I have the Gout?’ The Wizard of
Id, Evening Standard, 12 April 1996. 283
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