on by affluence that was considered fashionable

and a sign of wealth.

Though we know now what causes gout, a buildup in uric acid

caused by a rich diet of meats and booze

that mostly affects men.

It was a malady met with a lot of confusion

back in the glory days of gout.

Today we're talking about the disease

of kings, that is, gout.

But before we dip our toes into this,

be sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel and let

us know about what favorite disease you

would like to hear more about.

Now get your anti-inflammatories ready.

We're going gouting.

Gout is an arthritic condition characterized by the Mayo

Clinic as sudden, severe attacks of pain, swelling, redness,

and tenderness in the joints, often the joint

at the base of the big toe.

It's not surprising then that people

affected by gout lovingly describe the condition

as agonizing.

In the late 17th century, physician Thomas Sydenham

wrote that gout was so exquisitely painful as to not

endure the weight of the clothes nor the shaking of the room

from a person's walking briskly therein.

Translated roughly to today's nomenclature,

gout was painful as [BLEEP].

So painful, in fact, one couldn't

wear clothes or be in a room with people quickly pacing

around.

Take your impatient pacing elsewhere, Thomas.

Thomas likened the feeling of gout

to that of a dislocated bone, which

is not a favorable condition for a bone to be in.

In the 19th century, Reverend Sydney Smith

described his gout flareups as equal to walking on eyeballs.

So, yeah, good luck on seeing that pleasant picture

from your brain.

Much like Robin Hood, gout was thought to specifically attack

the rich.

From the earliest description from Hippocrates

himself, gout was linked with indulgent foods

and heavy alcohol consumption, a diet only the wealthy

could afford.

Due to this fact, gout started getting a reputation

as the disease of kings and even became

a bit of a humble brag, depicted as desirable

since it was a clear if not painful

and gross proof of wealth.

Poor people were priced out of the fun time gout provided.

In an 1900 comment from the London Times, a writer claimed,

the common cold is well named, but the gout seems instantly

to raise the patient's social status,

meaning gout sufferers were the original influencers

of their times.

Hashtag meatfoot, hashtag datgoutlife.

Medical treatments for gout ran the gambit as far

as making any logical sense at all.

From acupuncture in ancient China

down to consuming autumn crocuses

and the Byzantine Empire, it seemed

like a lot of throwing darts at the wall and seeing what stuck.

But the strangest remedy of them all

came from a 1518 medical book with a terrifying recipe

for better health.

Eat a fluffy little kitten.

Physician Lorenz Fries described this on-the-level gout

treatment recipe as, roast a fat, old goose and stuff

with chopped kittens, lard, incense, wax,

and flower of rye.

No, but we aren't done yet.

Once you eat this kitten-stuffed goose,

take the drippings from this creepy turducken Thanksgiving

table centerpiece and apply to those achy, gouty joints,

as one would with BenGay.

And just to state the obvious to everyone,

this concoction did not cure gout.

The closest to a cure of all these

were the Byzantine's since today colchicine is

used to treat gout, which is made from the autumn crocus

and not from adorable house pets.

You know what they say about a man's foot size?

Well, they took that extremely seriously from the 16th

to the 18th century.

Many during this time thought of gout as an aphrodisiac

because nobody ever understood what a woman wanted.

In 1588, essayist Michel de Montaigne declared,

when a man's leg were in a weakened state,

the genital parts are fuller, better nourished,

and more vigorous.

Nasty and wrong.

Gout of the junk is not a thing so no need to add that

to your Bumble profile.

In 1693, a Dutch writer, with a very loose idea

of how a human body works, said gout was great

because it allowed men to rest their reproductive organs

due to the whole in so much pain I can't walk

and must lay down aspect of having gout.

He said, for when a patient who is suffering from gout

is forced to lie on his back, anyone

who knows the channels of the sperm

trace their source to the kidneys

can easily and at his leisure comprehend

that the loins and the kidneys are hot and inflamed.

If you should find yourself with hot and inflamed kidneys,

please go to a hospital immediately,

no matter how excited you might also feel.

The oldest description of gout dates back to 400 BCE

by Hippocrates himself.

He believed gout was the result of phlegm settling

into the joints and claimed this delicious and unsettling

condition to be incurable.

Hippocrates stated, persons affected

with the gout who are aged have tophi

in their joints, who have led a hard life,

and whose bowels are constipated are beyond the power

of medicine to cure.

Hippocrates went on to assign the disease

cute little nicknames, terming gout the unwalkable disease

and arthritis of the rich, since he also

noticed the correlation of an indulgent diet of rich food

and wine and contracting fat beef foot disease.

For centuries, the most glaringly apparent and widely

understood trait associated with gout was its penchant for feet.

The ancient Greeks referred to gout as podagra,

or foot grabber, due to the afflictions favorite place

to settle in and get cozy was the big toe

of the poor or, in most cases decidedly not so poor,

gout sufferers.

In the 17th century, our old pal Thomas Sydenham

noticed this, too, describing a gout flareup,

waking up a patient with a pain which usually seizes

the great toe, but sometimes the heel, the calf of the leg,

or the ankle.

Today, doctors chalk up gout's foot fetish tendencies

due to the extremities not being as warm

as other parts of the body.

The big toe, in particular, collects

a build up of urate crystals, gout's power

source and favorite food because it is used the most frequently.

The Boston Tea Party, a major step

toward the American Revolution and the most tea ever spilled

before Twitter, may not have even happened if not for gout.

William Pitt the Elder, Britain's leading statesman

was suffering a gout flareup during the parliamentary debate

of the Stamp Act in 1764.

Once he was better, Pitt pushed to repeal the act,

saying Americans are the sons, not the bastards of England.

As subjects they are entitled to the right of common

representation and cannot be bound to pay taxes without

their consent.

Yet another tinge of gout caused Pitt to miss yet

another parliament meeting in which members agreed

to impose a high tax on tea imported

to the American colonies, which led to people dumping tea

into a river over a boat to tell those English where they can

stick their higher taxed tea.

If only Pitt had been there to argue his case,

the Boston Tea Party may not have ever been a thing.

Henry VIII, who we just did a video on recently,

was a hot-tempered murderous King

who got rid of a couple of wives and obsessed over

his lack of male heir.

But did you know he also had gout?

Yes, but hardly the only ruler to suffer from a bad case

of the disease of kings.

Decades earlier, the Florence Medici ruler Piero di Cosimo

was so sick with gout he was rudely

nicknamed Piero the Gouty by a less sensitive society

than we have today.

Benjamin Franklin, too, suffered from the affliction.

Benji the big gout baby wrote a letter to his beloved disease,

saying Madame Gout, what have I done

to merit these cruel sufferings?

Gout did write back to him.

Many things.

You have ate and drank too freely and too much

indulged those legs of yours in their indolence.

Pretty cool to write fan fiction of your crippling and chronic

disease, but that's crazy old Ben Franklin.

Another leader who fell victim to his diet of meats and wine

was Emperor Charles V, whose empire

included territories of Europe, Asia, Africa, and South

America.

Charles was a gout boy, but not like a regular gout boy,

like the one that changed the course of history gout boy.

Due to his meaty diet and love of beer and wine,

including a novelty-sized four-handed drinking

mug I'm sure everyone thought hilarious,

his gout flareups were so severe that during his clashes

with the French he could barely lead.

After the French took Metz in 1552,

our meaty emperor was suffering from the effects of gout

so brutally he called off the attempt

to recapture it from the French, handing

them an important victory and bumming out the Emperor's army.

Charles basically said, don't blame me, blame my gout,

before abdicating his throne and retiring to a monastery

where nobody expected anything from him

and he could suffer from his affliction

without having to do things.

Those who came down with a case of gout

were advised to stay off their feet and rest.

But in the interim, doctors came up with a few alternative,

and let's face it, cute footwear to treat the symptoms.

For centuries, doctors would use a gout stool

to relieve inflammation, which was quite literally just

a common stool for which to rest a leg

and not a magical stool that cured gout.

Doctors would also wrap the foot in a flannel

and told patients to wait for the bout of gout

to pass, which could take up to two weeks.

Advice also given to parents in the '90s, when their children,

too, became wrapped in flannel.

Just wait for it to pass.

By the early 20th century, physicians ditched the flannel

and designed a glass boot, which doctors would use to apply heat

to treat the symptoms of gout.

While the heat might have provided temporary relief,

it unfortunately also made things a whole lot worse.

Heat could dislodge the uric acid

from its cozy home in the joints and travel straight

to the kidneys, which were far less hospitable environment

for uric acid, as the organ would shut down

and the patient could perish.

Gout is caused by hyperuricemia, or excess

of uric acid in the blood.

Estrogen provides protection for women from hyperuricemia,

making them less likely to contract gout.

However, as women age and experience menopause,

estrogen decreases while their are opportunities for gout,

unlike their opportunities for meaty film roles, increases.

Doctors have also discovered gout

likes to keep it in the family, finding up

to 80% of gout sufferers come from a family of fellow gout

sufferers.

Nepotism does work against people sometimes.

First recognized as a form of arthritis in 1848

by Alfred Baring Garrod, the condition

continues to affect millions of people to this day.

In fact, doctors are seeing cases of gout rise,

with the affliction affecting 8.3 million people

in the United States alone.

As the US population becomes older and heavier, what