Gout: The Patrician Malady

by Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau

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 included among its sufferers 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 history of gout and through it offers a new perspective on medical and social history, sex, prejudice, and class, and explains why gout was gender specific.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

408 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Roy's books cover several fields: the history of geology, London, 18th-Century British ideas and society, medicine, madness, quackery, patients and practitioners, literature and art, on which subjects (and others) he published over 200 books are articles.

List of works can be found @ wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Porter )

Reviews

[Ereck · Rating 4 out of 5]

First read Jan 2010.
Re-read March 2013.