gout probably would never have existed. But
different drinks tend in different degrees to
produce it, and the latest information on that
subject is worth having. It is not the alcohol that
does it. Brandy or gin or whisky—any
distilled spirit taken by itself—seems to have no
power in producing gout. It comes of drinking
wines, strong ales, and porter. It is very
rare among the whisky-drinking classes of
Scotland and Ireland. Dr. Christison, in thirty
years' experience at the Edinburgh Infirmary,
met with only two cases of gout, and the
patients in each case were fat overfed English
butlers. Russians, Poles, and Danes, who drink
distilled spirit, know hardly anything of gout.
The Thames ballast-heavers, of whom each man
drinks when at work two or three gallons of
porter daily, yield, though a small body of men,
many cases of gout to the Seamen's Hospital
Ship. As they are most of them Irish, the
disease cannot be inherited. The gout is
produced by the large doses of porter.

Of fermented drinks, those which are most
apt to produce gout are port and sherry, or
strong varieties of other wine. Free use of
port or sherry may produce gout in a few years
when there is no hereditary tendency. The
lighter wines, as claret, hock, moselle, and
champagne, may excite an attack in gouty
subjects, but when taken in moderation, have little
influence in producing gout, and—except the
finer and stronger qualities—rank, in this
respect, with the weaker kinds of beer.

Of malt liquors, stout and porter tend most
to produce gout; next to them, strong ale and
even the ordinary bitter beer. Dr. Garrod
tells of a patient aged only thirty, who was
connected with a pale ale brewery, and had
suffered four years from gout, which was becoming
chronic. It had been established without any
help of his forefathers, by the habit of repeatedly
drinking pale ale in small quantities at a time,
though the total amount in the day was
considerable. It is curious that while strong
distilled spirit does not produce gout, fermented
drinks are liable to do so in proportion to their
strength. Acidity is not the cause, nor sugar;
for acid claret is comparatively harmless, while
sherry and port, the least acid of wines, are the
most powerful for mischief; so, too, liquors
the least sweet may be the most baneful. In
other respects than as gout producers, the
distilled spirits are more mischievous than wines;
they bring in their train, their own diseases
when used in excess: only gout is not one of
them.

Indigestion in certain forms, a rich animal
diet, and excess of food, tend to the establishment
of gout. Severe sedentary study, or mental
anxiety, or any nervous depression injuring the
digestion, will tend also in other ways to get the
unwelcome urate into the blood. Gout, perhaps
because of the difference of diet, is less common
in hot than in temperate climates, and its attacks
are especially common in the spring and autumn:
most common in spring: least common during
the hot months of summer.

There is a peculiar tendency to gout in
painters, plumbers, and workers in lead.

The predisposition being established, every
man finds out what will bring on a fit of his
gout most quickly. One cannot take a glass of
champagne, another cannot take a glass of
port, another cannot take a glass of Madeira,
without producing it. A patient subject to
gout only in a slight degree, felt pinching pains
in the toe immediately after drinking a second
glass of port wine. Whenever a few glasses of
wine, ale, or porter, tend quickly and invariably
to inflame a joint, that inflammation is a touch
of gout, and nothing else. Given the tendency,
whatever produces indigestion, especially if with
acidity, may excite the disease. One man got
gout if he drank lemonade, another man was
lamed by eating citron. Cold, or a wind checking
perspiration, will bring on an attack in
some patients; one sufferer always had his gout
brought on by the east wind. Then as to the
depression of mental labour; there is the case of
a scholar who brought on a fit of the gout by
solving a hard mathematical problem, and it has
been known to follow loss of blood by bleeding
at the nose or tooth drawing.

GUNNING.

GUNNING is my theme; not the patronymic
of those three beautiful sisters who fired the
hearts (if the dried-up integuments can be so
called) of the court gentlemen in the time of the
Regent, but the great art of shooting; on English
manor or Scottish moor, from the back of a pony
or the bows of a punt, in solitary ramble or
grand battue; indulged in by My lord with his
party of friends, his keepers, his gillies, and his
beaters, by Bill Lubbock the poacher, known
to the keepers as an "inweterate" with his
never-missing double-barrel and his marvellous
lurcher, or by Master Jones home for the holidays
from Rugby, who has invested his last tip
in a thirty-shilling Birmingham muzzle-loader,
with which he "pots" sparrows in the Willesden
fields. Gunning, which binds together men
of otherwise entirely opposite dispositions and
tastes, which gives many a toiler in cities pent
such healthful excitement and natural pleasure
as enable him to get through the eleven
dreary months, hanging on to the anticipation
of those thirty happy days when the broad
stubble-fields will stretch around him, and the
popping of the barrels make music in his ear;
gunning, a sport so fascinating, that to enjoy it
men in the prime of life, with high-sounding
titles and vast riches, will leave their comfortable
old ancestral homes, and the pleasant places
in which their lines have been cast, and go away
to potter for weeks in a miserable little half-
roofed shanty, on a steaming barren Highland
moor, or will risk life and limb in grim combat
with savage animals in deadly jungle or dismal
swamp. Gunning, whose devotees are
numbered by myriads, the high priest whereof is
Colonel Peter Hawker, of glorious memory, who