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.

About the Author
Roy Porter is professor of the social history of medicine at the Wellcome Institute, University College, London. He is the author or coauthor of many books, including The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 (ISBN 0 300 06221 4, #25.00), also published by Yale University Press. G.S. Rousseau has been the Regius Professor of English at King's College, Aberdeen, and in 1998-2001 holder of a Leverhulme Trust Award to work on literature and the culture of medicine in history.

Reviews
"This is a superb social, cultural, and medical history of one of the few diseases that people are proud to have." Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe "A marvelous book, discussing gout's history, its medical treatment, its social and cultural effects and showing it as a multi-influential phenomenon. An eye-opener." New Scientist "This book is as much a cultural as a medical history...very good reading." Claude Rawson, New York Times Book Review "Porter and Rousseau accurately trace the scientific advances influencing the understanding of gout...I greatly enjoyed this book." Daniel J. McCarty, New England Journal of Medicine



Book Information
ISBN 9780300082746
Author Roy Porter
Format Paperback
Page Count 408
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press
Weight(grams) 544g