Peter Jones

How the ancients treated gout

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issue 27 August 2022

Medical problems come and go in the media, and at the moment the flavour of the month appears to be gout (from Latin gutta, a ‘drop’, seeping into a joint).

For the Greek doctor Hippocrates, gout (Greek podagra, ‘foot-trap’) was the ‘fiercest, longest and most tenacious of all joint diseases’.

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