Gout sounds like a horrifically
painful condition brought
on by affluence that was
considered fashionable
and a sign of wealth.
Though we know now what causes
gout, a buildup in uric acid
caused by a rich diet
of meats and booze
that mostly affects men.
It was a malady met
with a lot of confusion
back in the glory days of gout.
Today we're talking
about the disease
of kings, that is, gout.
But before we dip
our toes into this,
be sure to subscribe to the
Weird History channel and let
us know about what
favorite disease you
would like to hear more about.
Now get your
anti-inflammatories ready.
We're going gouting.
Gout is an arthritic condition
characterized by the Mayo
Clinic as sudden, severe attacks
of pain, swelling, redness,
and tenderness in the
joints, often the joint
at the base of the big toe.
It's not surprising
then that people
affected by gout lovingly
describe the condition
as agonizing.
In the late 17th century,
physician Thomas Sydenham
wrote that gout was so
exquisitely painful as to not
endure the weight of the clothes
nor the shaking of the room
from a person's walking
briskly therein.
Translated roughly to
today's nomenclature,
gout was painful as [BLEEP].
So painful, in
fact, one couldn't
wear clothes or be in a room
with people quickly pacing
around.
Take your impatient
pacing elsewhere, Thomas.
Thomas likened the
feeling of gout
to that of a
dislocated bone, which
is not a favorable condition
for a bone to be in.
In the 19th century,
Reverend Sydney Smith
described his gout flareups as
equal to walking on eyeballs.
So, yeah, good luck on
seeing that pleasant picture
from your brain.
Much like Robin Hood, gout was
thought to specifically attack
the rich.
From the earliest
description from Hippocrates
himself, gout was linked
with indulgent foods
and heavy alcohol consumption,
a diet only the wealthy
could afford.
Due to this fact, gout
started getting a reputation
as the disease of
kings and even became
a bit of a humble brag,
depicted as desirable
since it was a
clear if not painful
and gross proof of wealth.
Poor people were priced out
of the fun time gout provided.
In an 1900 comment from the
London Times, a writer claimed,
the common cold is well named,
but the gout seems instantly
to raise the patient's
social status,
meaning gout sufferers were
the original influencers
of their times.
Hashtag meatfoot,
hashtag datgoutlife.
Medical treatments for
gout ran the gambit as far
as making any
logical sense at all.
From acupuncture
in ancient China
down to consuming
autumn crocuses
and the Byzantine
Empire, it seemed
like a lot of throwing darts at
the wall and seeing what stuck.
But the strangest
remedy of them all
came from a 1518 medical
book with a terrifying recipe
for better health.
Eat a fluffy little kitten.
Physician Lorenz Fries
described this on-the-level gout
treatment recipe as, roast
a fat, old goose and stuff
with chopped kittens,
lard, incense, wax,
and flower of rye.
No, but we aren't done yet.
Once you eat this
kitten-stuffed goose,
take the drippings from this
creepy turducken Thanksgiving
table centerpiece and apply
to those achy, gouty joints,
as one would with BenGay.
And just to state the
obvious to everyone,
this concoction
did not cure gout.
The closest to a
cure of all these
were the Byzantine's
since today colchicine is
used to treat gout, which is
made from the autumn crocus
and not from
adorable house pets.
You know what they say
about a man's foot size?
Well, they took that extremely
seriously from the 16th
to the 18th century.
Many during this time thought
of gout as an aphrodisiac
because nobody ever understood
what a woman wanted.
In 1588, essayist Michel
de Montaigne declared,
when a man's leg were
in a weakened state,
the genital parts are
fuller, better nourished,
and more vigorous.
Nasty and wrong.
Gout of the junk is not a
thing so no need to add that
to your Bumble profile.
In 1693, a Dutch writer,
with a very loose idea
of how a human body
works, said gout was great
because it allowed men to
rest their reproductive organs
due to the whole in so
much pain I can't walk
and must lay down
aspect of having gout.
He said, for when a patient
who is suffering from gout
is forced to lie
on his back, anyone
who knows the
channels of the sperm
trace their source
to the kidneys
can easily and at his
leisure comprehend
that the loins and the
kidneys are hot and inflamed.
If you should find yourself
with hot and inflamed kidneys,
please go to a
hospital immediately,
no matter how excited
you might also feel.
The oldest description of
gout dates back to 400 BCE
by Hippocrates himself.
He believed gout was the
result of phlegm settling
into the joints and claimed
this delicious and unsettling
condition to be incurable.
Hippocrates stated,
persons affected
with the gout who
are aged have tophi
in their joints, who
have led a hard life,
and whose bowels are
constipated are beyond the power
of medicine to cure.
Hippocrates went on
to assign the disease
cute little nicknames, terming
gout the unwalkable disease
and arthritis of the
rich, since he also
noticed the correlation of an
indulgent diet of rich food
and wine and contracting
fat beef foot disease.
For centuries, the most
glaringly apparent and widely
understood trait associated with
gout was its penchant for feet.
The ancient Greeks referred
to gout as podagra,
or foot grabber, due to the
afflictions favorite place
to settle in and get
cozy was the big toe
of the poor or, in most
cases decidedly not so poor,
gout sufferers.
In the 17th century, our
old pal Thomas Sydenham
noticed this, too,
describing a gout flareup,
waking up a patient with a
pain which usually seizes
the great toe, but sometimes
the heel, the calf of the leg,
or the ankle.
Today, doctors chalk up
gout's foot fetish tendencies
due to the extremities
not being as warm
as other parts of the body.
The big toe, in
particular, collects
a build up of urate
crystals, gout's power
source and favorite food because
it is used the most frequently.
The Boston Tea
Party, a major step
toward the American Revolution
and the most tea ever spilled
before Twitter, may not have
even happened if not for gout.
William Pitt the Elder,
Britain's leading statesman
was suffering a gout flareup
during the parliamentary debate
of the Stamp Act in 1764.
Once he was better, Pitt
pushed to repeal the act,
saying Americans are the sons,
not the bastards of England.
As subjects they are entitled
to the right of common
representation and cannot be
bound to pay taxes without
their consent.
Yet another tinge of gout
caused Pitt to miss yet
another parliament meeting
in which members agreed
to impose a high
tax on tea imported
to the American colonies,
which led to people dumping tea
into a river over a boat to tell
those English where they can
stick their higher taxed tea.
If only Pitt had been
there to argue his case,
the Boston Tea Party may
not have ever been a thing.
Henry VIII, who we just
did a video on recently,
was a hot-tempered
murderous King
who got rid of a couple
of wives and obsessed over
his lack of male heir.
But did you know
he also had gout?
Yes, but hardly the only ruler
to suffer from a bad case
of the disease of kings.
Decades earlier, the Florence
Medici ruler Piero di Cosimo
was so sick with
gout he was rudely
nicknamed Piero the Gouty
by a less sensitive society
than we have today.
Benjamin Franklin, too,
suffered from the affliction.
Benji the big gout baby wrote a
letter to his beloved disease,
saying Madame Gout,
what have I done
to merit these cruel sufferings?
Gout did write back to him.
Many things.
You have ate and drank
too freely and too much
indulged those legs of
yours in their indolence.
Pretty cool to write fan fiction
of your crippling and chronic
disease, but that's
crazy old Ben Franklin.
Another leader who fell victim
to his diet of meats and wine
was Emperor Charles
V, whose empire
included territories of
Europe, Asia, Africa, and South
America.
Charles was a gout boy, but
not like a regular gout boy,
like the one that changed the
course of history gout boy.
Due to his meaty diet and
love of beer and wine,
including a novelty-sized
four-handed drinking
mug I'm sure everyone
thought hilarious,
his gout flareups were so
severe that during his clashes
with the French he
could barely lead.
After the French
took Metz in 1552,
our meaty emperor was suffering
from the effects of gout
so brutally he called
off the attempt
to recapture it from
the French, handing
them an important victory and
bumming out the Emperor's army.
Charles basically said, don't
blame me, blame my gout,
before abdicating his throne
and retiring to a monastery
where nobody expected
anything from him
and he could suffer
from his affliction
without having to do things.
Those who came down
with a case of gout
were advised to stay
off their feet and rest.
But in the interim, doctors
came up with a few alternative,
and let's face it, cute
footwear to treat the symptoms.
For centuries, doctors
would use a gout stool
to relieve inflammation,
which was quite literally just
a common stool for
which to rest a leg
and not a magical
stool that cured gout.
Doctors would also wrap
the foot in a flannel
and told patients to
wait for the bout of gout
to pass, which could
take up to two weeks.
Advice also given to parents in
the '90s, when their children,
too, became wrapped in flannel.
Just wait for it to pass.
By the early 20th century,
physicians ditched the flannel
and designed a glass boot, which
doctors would use to apply heat
to treat the symptoms of gout.
While the heat might have
provided temporary relief,
it unfortunately also made
things a whole lot worse.
Heat could dislodge
the uric acid
from its cozy home in the
joints and travel straight
to the kidneys, which were far
less hospitable environment
for uric acid, as the
organ would shut down
and the patient could perish.
Gout is caused by
hyperuricemia, or excess
of uric acid in the blood.
Estrogen provides protection
for women from hyperuricemia,
making them less likely
to contract gout.
However, as women age
and experience menopause,
estrogen decreases while their
are opportunities for gout,
unlike their opportunities for
meaty film roles, increases.
Doctors have also
discovered gout
likes to keep it in
the family, finding up
to 80% of gout sufferers come
from a family of fellow gout
sufferers.
Nepotism does work
against people sometimes.
First recognized as a
form of arthritis in 1848
by Alfred Baring
Garrod, the condition
continues to affect millions
of people to this day.
In fact, doctors are
seeing cases of gout rise,
with the affliction
affecting 8.3 million people
in the United States alone.
As the US population becomes
older and heavier, what
with food and wine being so
tasty and exercise being so,
eh, I'll start it
next year, doctors
should probably expect those
numbers to continue to climb.
As should gout's social status,
because Jared Leto and Dick
Cheney are two notable people
who both have the affliction.
So have you had
to deal with gout?
Do you feel shame?
Let us know in the
comments below.
And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos
from our Weird History.
