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Post by Jaga on Oct 29, 2011 21:15:37 GMT -7
What disease was known from antique times and was spread usually among wealthy, kings, arystocracy etc?
It is still present today
Polish king Vladislav IV Vasa had it.
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Post by justjohn on Oct 30, 2011 4:23:59 GMT -7
What disease was known from antique times and was spread usually among wealthy, kings, arystocracy etc? It is still present today Polish king Vladislav IV Vasa had it. |
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Post by Jaga on Oct 30, 2011 5:25:14 GMT -7
John, yes, of course it is the gout. People who has it should watch their diet and not to eat anything heavy at night:
The word gout was initially used by Randolphus of Bocking, around 1200 AD. It is derived from the Latin word gutta, meaning "a drop" (of liquid).[47] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is derived from humorism and "the notion of the 'dropping' of a morbid material from the blood in and around the joints".[48]
Gout has, however, been known since antiquity. Historically, it has been referred to as "the king of diseases and the disease of kings"[6][49] or "rich man's disease".[50] The first documentation of the disease is from Egypt in 2,600 BC in a description of arthritis of the big toe. The Greek physician Hippocrates around 400 BC commented on it in his Aphorisms, noting its absence in eunuchs and premenopausal women.[47][51] Aulus Cornelius Celsus (30 AD) described the linkage with alcohol, later onset in women, and associated kidney problems:
Again thick urine, the sediment from which is white, indicates that pain and disease are to be apprehended in the region of joints or viscera... Joint troubles in the hands and feet are very frequent and persistent, such as occur in cases of podagra and cheiragra. These seldom attack eunuchs or boys before coition with a woman, or women except those in whom the menses have become suppressed... some have obtained lifelong security by refraining from wine, mead and venery .[52]
While in 1683, Thomas Sydenham, an English physician, described its occurrence in the early hours of the morning, and its predilection for older males:
Gouty patients are, generally, either old men, or men who have so worn themselves out in youth as to have brought on a premature old age - of such dissolute habits none being more common than the premature and excessive indulgence in venery, and the like exhausting passions. The victim goes to bed and sleeps in good health. About two o'clock in the morning he is awakened by a severe pain in the great toe; more rarely in the heel, ankle or instep. The pain is like that of a dislocation, and yet parts feel as if cold water were poured over them. Then follows chills and shivers, and a little fever... The night is passed in torture, sleeplessness, turning the part affected, and perpetual change of posture; the tossing about of body being as incessant as the pain of the tortured joint, and being worse as the fit comes on.[53]
The Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first described the microscopic appearance of urate crystals in 1679.[47] In 1848 English physician Alfred Baring Garrod realized that this excess uric acid in the blood was the cause of gout.[54]
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Post by justjohn on Oct 30, 2011 8:47:34 GMT -7
Well, gout seems to be common on my wife's side of the family.
Her father had gout, her mother had gout and her uncle has gout.
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