Gout and goutiness : and their treatment / by William Ewart.

  • William Ewart
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gout and goutiness : and their treatment / by William Ewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    41/612 (page 25)
    THE GENERAL ETIOLOGY OF GOUT. The general aetiology of gout as regards heredity, age, sex, climate, and conditions of life is fairly well known. At least half the cases of gout are inherited. This is about the proportion worked out by Sir A. Garrod. Scudamore found a ratio of 309 to 523, and other observers a still higher proportion; a few only estimating it at one-third. Most commonly gout is inherited from the father. Maternal gout, however, being less frequently of a declared type, may often have been overlooked in statistics; this might partly account for the wide differences between the various estimates. It has long been known that the later offspring is more liable than the earlier, and Mr. J. Hut- chinson* draws attention to the fact that the last born of a gouty progeny are more likely to develop the affection early and to suffer severely. Gout is undoubtedly modified in transmission. This is a natural consequence of the greater delicacy of the offspring, and of the inheritance of gouty structural peculiarities from progenitors whose own gout, if acquired, may have been grafted on a robust constitution. Gout, in the weaker subject, could not develop on the same lines as in the stronger one. * ' The Hereditary Transmission of Gout,' Medical Times a7id Gazette^ May 20, 1876.