Gout

Roy Porter is professor of the social history of medicine at the Wellcome Institute, University College, London. He is the author or coauthor of many books, including The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 (ISBN 0 300 06221 4, #25.00), also published by Yale University Press. G.S. Rousseau has been the Regius Professor of English at King's College, Aberdeen, and in 1998-2001 holder of a Leverhulme Trust Award to work on literature and the culture of medicine in history.

"This is a superb social, cultural, and medical history of one of the few diseases that people are proud to have." Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe "A marvelous book, discussing gout's history, its medical treatment, its social and cultural effects and showing it as a multi-influential phenomenon. An eye-opener." New Scientist "This book is as much a cultural as a medical history...very good reading." Claude Rawson, New York Times Book Review "Porter and Rousseau accurately trace the scientific advances influencing the understanding of gout...I greatly enjoyed this book." Daniel J. McCarty, New England Journal of Medicine