Biochemistry of Uric Acid and Its Relation to Gout

Abstract

GOUTY arthritis has not only profitably attracted the interest of historians of medicine and chemistry but also provided footnotes to social and political history since so many prominent leaders of the past have been victims of this disease. The distinctive clinical features of gout, which consist of the sudden onset of the acute attack, the excruciating severity of the pain, the complete subsidence of pain between attacks, the familial occurrence and the tendency for tophi to develop, permitted this disease to be distinguished from the other types of arthritis relatively early in the history of medicine. Indeed, the first description . . .