Customer Reviews

Gout

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This is the third review I have written on Socio-medical histories by Roy Porter. I read and reviewed this book, "Gout - the Patrician Malady" at the same time as his more general medical histories "Cambridge Illustrated History: Medicine" - and "The Greatest Benefit to Mankind". I wanted to compare these books with Porter's work on more specific topics. Porter mentions Gout in passing in both his general histories, but I wondered how he would deal with a more specific subject which had the space of an entire book to develop.

He certainly brings the same light writing style to this book as he does to his other subjects and I it made fun reading for what at times could have been very dull and dry.

Porter turns a medical subject into a very interesing social history, he overlays the historical recognition of Gout, its rise in prevalance and treatment, as well as the development of it as a fashionable, upper-class ailment very well. He does this by drawing in the literature and art of the times to track its social progress. Porter certainly shows himself a master of the subject. However, I didn't like the way he sectioned the book. It felt clumsy to me. It is in three parts Histories, Cultures and Goutometries and they seemed to overlap especially the last two sections. Although I did love the chapter on Art in 'Goutometries'. Perhaps the most interesting chapter for me was the in the 'Cultures' section "Indian Summer; Romantic and Victorian Gout" which traced the literary tradition against the actual social status of Gout through the nineteenth century using representations of Gout in Disraeli and Austen to George Eliot. The most amusing thing, I thought, was Gout as a symbol of social status - Gout was for the upper classes, and rather fashionable - and this resulted in many non-gout illnesses being diagnosed as Gout.

At times I found the book rather long - but I rather think that was me rather than the writing. Most of my interest lies in the Georgian period which was really the peak of the Gout popularity. I wish it had been illustrated in colour too. The only illustrations at all were in the Goutometries and those were black reproductions on standard paper. The book probably has limited interest to most people - but for lovers of Georgian period or medical histories I think this is well worth reading.

An overview of, apparently, everything anyone ever wrote about the gout. Well, not quite "anyone": it's very much Euro-centric, indeed from the 17th century on it's almost exclusively Anglo-centric. And not quite "ever": it pretty much stops with the dawn of the 20th century, except for one Wizard of Id cartoon. But when I say "everything" I mean EVERYTHING, to the point of tedium. Thoroughness is generally a good quality, and it's very very thorough--40 pages of endnotes (which are not lengthy digressions: most are simple one-line citations), 50+ pages of bibliography--but lordy, there's no *there* there. In particular, I would have liked, either at the beginning or the end, a precis of the modern medical interpretation of what gout is, to compare and contrast with evolving interpretations over the ages. And besides "regular" gout, more explanation of what earlier centuries were talking about with their irregular gout, flying gout, wandering gout, retrocedent gout, and various other flavors. What this is, is the solid spadework necessary for someone else to go out and write a *useful* history of gout.

One good point: I learned that Edward "Decline and Fall" Gibbon was so short and round that his friends nicknamed him "Mr Chubby-Chubb"; also, he had a swollen testicle as large as a melon, "which he did his best to ignore." (How?!?) (He eventually died of septicaemia from surgery to remove same.)

One especially bad point: In the last two chapters, on gout in literature and in art (almost exclusively English literature and art, of course), the language is so twee and academic and lit-crit as to be quite opaque. There were whole passages where I simply did not understand what the authors were saying.

Many interesting points in this book, but it was all very disorganized, and all too often the most interesting moments were curtailed with a short "there's not enough space here to cover that." The language of the book is overbearingly pedantic to no great effect, obscuring rather than clarifying the arguments. On the other hand, the subject matter is fascinating, and if you sift through a lot of nonsense, you can get a great overview of how the concept of disease generally -- and one in particular -- works it way through history and culture.

My son suffers from gout and this book explains many facts that some of us are unaware of.

This was a very interesting book from a/an historical perspective. I would have liked more information on the disease pathology from a layperson's view.