Gout, with a section on ocular disease in the gouty

by Llewellyn J. Llewellyn

Locality, Race, Climate, etc.—As to the geographical distribution of gout, the salient fact would appear to be the almost complete restriction of the disorder to the temperate zone. Among the natives of Africa gout, according to Livingstone, is unknown. Neither apparently is it to be met with in Turkey, China, Japan, Peru, and the Brazils. The indigenous peoples of India, and the East Indian Archipelago, also seem exempt, though the immunity does not extend to Europeans resident in these tropical climes.

It is significant that Duckworth, inquiring of practitioners from foreign parts as to their experience of gout, found that little or none was forthcoming “save where Europeans have formed part of the community.” This statement, to my mind, does but add cogency to my contention that gout is always hereditary.

If we restrict our purview to the British Isles and the Continent, we find that as a nation we have achieved the unenviable distinction of being facile princeps in point of the liability to and incidence of gout. The bulk of examples, too, are met with in England, the disorder being much less frequent in Scotland and Ireland. Moreover, in the two latter countries, the disorder is practically restricted to the upper classes. By contrast, in England it has extended to the lower orders also, in respect of which peculiarity we stand unique as compared with all other countries.

Reverting to the Continent, gout appears to be more common in France than in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Indeed, it is said to be endemic in Normandy, Burgundy, and the Rhone Valleys. In Holland, according to Duckworth, there is practically no gout, and the same is true of Russia, save in Petrograd and the Baltic Provinces.

In Belgium, also, gout is not common, and in Greece it is much less prevalent than in France or England.

In regard to the incidence of gout, its greater prevalence in temperate as opposed to tropical climes, and the disparities between different countries, it would be unsafe to assume that the variations are the outcome solely of climate. Thus the immunity of, e.g., strict Mohammedans is attributable in part to their sobriety and the less highly nitrogenous character of their food. But, if seduced into the ways of the “infidel,” their exemption, it is said, ceases. Europeans, of “gouty” heritage, may, if temperate, escape gout when resident in the tropics, otherwise they fall victims thereto just as surely as at home.

Gout, indeed, is more a matter of morals than climate. In the palmy days of the Roman Empire, when luxury and indolence were rampant, gout flourished, but declined following the installation of a republican form of government. In like fashion and for similar reasons, the inhabitants of modern Greece suffer infinitely less from the ravages of gout than of yore. In short, the climate of Italy and Greece has presumably endured unchanged, but the “habits” of their peoples have altered.

Formerly it was held that the incidence of gout in any country or district varied according as to whether the population drank wine and malt liquors, or distilled spirits. Where the taste for the latter predominated, the disease was relatively rare, whence the comparative immunity of Scotland, Russia, Poland, and Denmark. But what of the rarity of gout in the wine-producing country Spain? Nor for that matter have I ever seen it claimed that gout was especially prevalent in Portugal, the home of “port,” that bête noir of the “gouty.” In truth, dogmatism is here out of place, for though overeating and overdrinking are undeniably important factors in eliciting gout, they are not the sole factors.

In reviewing the statements made as to the geographical distribution and the race incidence of gout it is but too manifest that they are largely provisional; indeed, such information as we do possess as to its relative frequency in various countries, must be taken cum grano salis. Thus, who can doubt that the various affirmations must have been very largely influenced by the “personal equation,” that what one authority would define as gout would by another be deemed inadmissible to this category. Moreover, many of the original statements were made at a time when the differentiation of arthritic disorders, as we now know it, was but in its infancy. For obvious reasons, therefore, no researches in this sphere can ever be satisfactory, until the opinion of the profession at home and abroad be crystallised into some definite pronouncement, some precise definition, of the exact criteria by which the diagnosis of gout stands or falls.

In justification of these strictures, may I cite some opinions as to the frequency of gout in the United States. In 1890, Sir Dyce Duckworth affirmed that in America gout was “practically unknown.” But a few years later, we find Sir William Osier convinced that gout was often unrecognised in the United States. More pertinent still, only twenty years after Duckworth’s affirmation, Luff quoted the statistics of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, from which it appeared that during a period of fourteen years 0·26 per cent. of the total admissions thereto were examples of gout. This he contrasts with the number of cases of gout admitted to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, during a similar period. Mirabile dictu, the percentage was only 0·37, but a third more than that of the Johns Hopkins Hospital!