Reverting to our own country, what evidences as to its antiquity are forthcoming? This much may at any rate be affirmed, that according to Mason Good “Gout is one of the maladies which seem to have been common in England in its earliest ages of barbarism. It is frequently noticed by the Anglo-Saxon historian, and the name assigned to it is Fot-adl.”
Cockayne, in his “Leechdoms Wortcumming and Starcraft,” of early England, has it that the word “addle” appears to have been a synonym for ailment, thus “Shingles was hight circle addle.” That gout should have flourished so among our Anglo-Saxon forbears is perhaps a matter for regret but not for astonishment, when we recall their coarse Gargantuan feasts, washed down with doughty draughts of ale, “sack and the well spic’d hippocras.”
Gout, we see then, even in our own land, is full ancient, and the word, as Bradley as shown, may be traced in the English tongue right through the literature of the various periods.[2] This not only in the brochures of physicians, but also as in the days of Lucian in the works of historians, and the satires of poets, which indeed abound with allusions to the disease.
Views of the Humoralists
The Greek physicians, quite familiar as they were with the overt manifestations of gout, did not, as far as its nosology was concerned, commit themselves to any appellation that might imply their adherence to any theory as to its causation. They contented themselves with a mere topographical designation, terming the affection, podagra, chirargra, etc., according as foot or hand was the seat of the disorder, while for polyarticular types the generic term arthritis was invoked.
Nevertheless the old Greek physicians had their views as to its pathology. Thus the source of the peccant humours resided for them in the brain, which they had invested with all the functions of an absorbent and secreting gland. This hypothesis in time was displaced by the true humoral theory, according to which the bodily fluids, those found in the alimentary canal, the blood stream, and the glandular organs, were the primordial agents of disease. No need, albeit, for gibes on our part, for how true much of their conception of the genesis of disease even to-day. Indeed, what else than a fusion of the foregoing views? the modern theory of Sir Dyce Duckworth, who would ascribe gout to the combined influence of neural and humoral factors. And now to consider briefly the individual views of the fathers of medicine.
The Aphorisms of Hippocrates
In the eyes of the pioneer priest-physician, the disorder was attributable to a retention of humours, and many of his dicta have stood the corroding test of time. He noted, like Sydenham, its tendency to periodicity, its liability to recur at spring and fall. Also that eunuchs are immune and youths also, ante usum veneris, while in females its incidence is usually delayed until after the menopause.
The curability of the disease in its earlier stages was affirmed, but that after the deposit of chalk in the joints it proved rebellious to treatment, which for him resided in purgation and the local application of cooling agents.
In the first and second centuries Celsus, Galen, and Aretæus the Cappadocian recounted their views as to its nature and therapy, while the Augustan poet in his Pontic epistles, like Hippocrates, laments that his gouty swellings defy the art of medicine.