George H. EllwangerThinkers

Gout is so closely associated with the daily subsistence of civilised man... the sequence of high-living and thorn in the rose of gastronomy, with many years of savoury dinners and fragrant vintages as its genesis and means of evolution. More or less allied to dyspepsia and kin to indigestion, it is, nevertheless, a common affliction induced by widely varying causes, that since the days of the ancients has proved a weariness to the flesh and has yielded little to medication.... and falls without warning upon the just and the unjust still. No other malady, not strictly organic, has baffled medical science to so great an extent, the doctors themselves being frequently among its chosen victims, with whom it often flourishes under the more plebeian title of "rheumatism.

Gout is the foe that may be lying in ambush amid the sauces, the bottles, the sweets, and the flesh-pots.