This tragedy, in poetic form, was composed towards the close of the
sixteenth century by J. D. L. Blambeausaut. It has only three scenes,
and depicts the triumph of the gout. The poet describes an old man
overcome by the multiple pains of podagra, praying to obtain some
slight respite from the atrocious and agonizing pain he endures. The
Gout, an ever malevolent deity, rejects the old man’s prayer for
help, but carries him into a gathering of doctors who are vaunting, in
mutual admiration society fashion, their power in jugulating all forms
of disease and exalting their specifics for every known affection.
In order to punish these arrogant disciples of Æsculapius for their
presumption, the Gout gives them all the disease that bears his name,
and afterwards jeers at their impotent efforts to cure themselves of
aching joints.
This tragedy, name given by the author of the poem, is a very curious
treatise on the gout in rhyme, in which we find all the pathogenetic
theories given credence before the time that medical chemistry revealed
the action of an excess of uric acid in the organism. The blood, bile,
peccant humors settling in the parts affected were, as we all know,
causes attributed to diathesis by the majority of medical authors of
the Middle Ages. Thus the gout-afflicted man, in his imprecations
against what he calls “the torturer of humanity,” comes to say:
“From the top of my head to the end of my toes
I am cruelly tortured by agony’s woes,
Filled up with black blood and billious humor,
My flesh seems to pulsate like a sore tumor.
The eating and gnawing I can’t describe well;
My tendons all ache with the twinges of Hell,
While through my fingers pains cut like a knife
And add to my torment! I’m weary of life.”
Meantime our patient does not appear to have a robust faith in the
humoral theories of his physician, for he adds, in accursing the malady
that has ruined his health, that it permits him no repose:
“Mal que jamais l’homme n’a pu comprendre
Qui le plus sage induirait a se pendre.”
That is to say, that the doctors do not understand how to manage the
disease, a common idea among patients who are not cured of their malady
as speedily as they desire.
In one of the scenes the gout addresses a pompous eulogy on its power
over humanity, and inveighs against those physicians who discover a new
specific against gout every day. This list of remedies for the disease
is appalling; we cull but a few to satisfy the reader’s curiosity:
“One advises flea wort and a parsley pill,
One eats fruit at morning, when with gout he’s ill,
One chews leaves of lettuce, one takes wild purslain;
Another smells pond lilies, when he doth complain.
Some remedies most curious are for gout deemed good,
Such are herbs and simples to purify the blood;
Angelica and gentian, the iris and green thyme,
Along with fresh culled myrtle will cure it all the time;
Hyssop and lavender, cherry and water cress,
Basil, hops and anise, all make the pain grow less.
Lentills, sage and savory, when the bowels they unbind,
And the marvelous merchoracan that comes from far off Ind.
There’s the beauteous laurel leaf that crowneth bard and king,
Privet and cardamoms, whose praise we often sing.
And there’s the sleeping poppy, what peace within it resides,
Culled by the Turkish houris in the garden Hesperides;
There’s the soothing comfrey and the glorious hoarhound,
And the magic betal nut, in tropic isles that’s found;
There’s the fragrant _fleur de lis_, when with pain you cry,
There’s the odorous sheep dung, given always on the sly.
Some dote on peach blossoms; some on saffron red,
Some like hyoscyamus mixed with piss-a-bed;
There’s bread crumbs and fennel mixed with young carrots
Pounded in a mortar along with eschalots.
There are some who use an ointment this disease to heal,
Made of rinds of citron and golden orange peel,
With frankencense and veratria root, to ease gouty pain,
Applied to the great toes on the leaves of green plantain.
There’s saltpeter ointment too, when to the foot applied
It makes the patient furious wroth, or else he’s terrified,
Giving the gout new twinges, and the sufferer spasms
Only eased by eggs and flour in a soft cataplasm.
Some patients take a razor and their own flesh deeply cut;
The wound then duly poulticed is with meal and Cyprus nut.
Some take red cabbage when other methods fail
And eat it with vinegar mixed with the slime of snail;
Some use biting dressings made from ugly lizards,
Pounded up with doe’s hoof and weasel gizzards.
Many think a certain and most efficacious cure
Is a little blue stone ointment mixed with man’s ordure,
And a celebrated surgeon, a knight of great renown,
Used virgin urine as a cure for all the men in town.
Some wear charms like foxes’ tails, or a beaver tooth;
Others boil a new born caul and chew it up, forsooth,”
etc., etc., _ad nauseam_.
Such are a few of the drugs employed against the gout, and certainly we
cannot enumerate all the remedies spoken of by this malevolent demon.
The treatment of Alexander Trallian, for example, is no less odd than
many of the recipes given in this poetic formulary; it was composed of
myrrh, coral, cloves, rue, peony and birthwort pounded together and
mixed in certain proportions, and prescribed as an antidote to the gout
for the space of 365 days, in the following manner: To be taken for
100 consecutive days, and then omitted for thirty days; then taken for
another 100 days, with fifteen days omission afterwards; finally, every
other day for 360 days. Circumcision was also a remedy, only applicable
to Christians for obvious reasons.[98]
This treatment is an example of the methodical system, and “rests
upon superstitious gifts,” says Sprengel. But there are some merits
discoverable even in this apparent superstition, _i.e._, the great
truth that the gout is a constitutional disease produced by luxury, and
consequently incurable by medicines; a severe regimen being imposed, at
the same time foolish prescriptions were given; it was the dieting and
not the formula that made Alexander Trallian’s treatment so successful.
However, it must not be forgotten that some medicines had a powerful
effect in attenuating the violence of the gouty attack; it was for
this reason that Cœlius Aurelianus resorted to purgatives and mineral
waters; and among the drugs used by chance in the Middle Ages were
found the flowers and bulbs of colchicum; the haughty Demon of Gout
dared not treat this remedy with disdain.
Meantime the _Gout_ addressed the following lines to the physicians and
_mires_ of the age.
“Gardez vous, Siriens;
Menteurs magiciens,
Vendeurs de theriaque,
Qu’elle ne vous attaque.”
To call the doctor of ancient times a “_vender of Theriacum_” was an
insult to professional pride. This absurd remedy was invented by one
of Nero’s slaves, and held a high place in public estimation. “It was
laid down in the pharmacopœias, _ad ostentationem artis_,” says Pliny,
“and enjoyed a reputation that was never justified by its thirty-six
ingredients and the varied assortment of inert gums entering into its
composition.”
In the third scene of the tragedy, the Demon Gout, recalls to the
memory of the doctors of the Middle Ages, its illustrious victims of
antiquity.
“Priam, disposed to run, had gout;
Achilles was too lame to get about;
Bellerophon’s saddle toes complained;
Ædipus had big joints that pained;
Plisthenes on his feet, all swollen stood,
Cursing the gout that coursed with his blood.”
How many other of the great have wept with the gout?
Then calling his faithful servitors, Pain, Insomnia, and Indigestion,
the Demon Gout bids them plunge his fiery darts into his enemies, to
burn them with an unquenchable flame:
“Toy, brule ici par des douleurs nouvelles
Le chef premier, les cuisses et tendons,
Toy, convertis leur nerfs en noir charbons,
Et vous aussi, d’une fureur soudaine,
Froissez leurs mains, rendez leur drogue vaine.”
With this superb peroration, he afflicts all good doctors with the
gout and rheumatism. Since that day physicians the world over, says
our talented author, J. D. L. Blambeausaut, have been the victims of
this horrible malady. Let us now turn to the consideration of a curious
hygienic play, no less interesting than that of the Gout,