GOURVILLE, gTx7evelf, JEAN HERAULT DE (1625-1703). A French political agent, born at La Rochefoucauld. He entered the service of the Abbe de la Rochefoucauld, went to Paris with him, and there became secretary to the Prince de Alarsillae (1646). From that time he was deep in all the political intrigues of the day. During the wars of the Fronde he attached himself par ticularly to Conde. By various means he had enriched himself considerably, so that when con demned to lose his fortune through confiscation after the fall of Fouquet, he escaped to Eng land, and finally settled in Brussels. In 1667 he was able to be of service to France at the Congress of Breda, and afterwards was employed in political missions until he obtained the official pardon necessary before he could return to Court. The last years of his life were spent in the best of the literary society of the time. He left some Memoires (1724).
GOUT (from OF. gouty, goutte, It. gotta, drop, gout, from Lat. gutta, drop). A term first used by Radalphus in the thirteenth century, who taught that gout was caused by a humor that flowed drop by drop into the joints. The very numerous references to the disorder, not only in the medical writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Are tieus,lius, Aurelianus, and the later Greek physicians, but in such purely literary works as those of Lucian, Seneca, Ovid, and Pliny, show not only the frequency, but the notoriety of the disease. It is caricatured by Lucian in his bur lesque of Tragopodagra in language quite ap plicable to the disease as now observed; while the connection of it with the advance of luxury in Rome is recognized by Seneca in the remark that in his day even the women had become gouty, thus setting at naught the authority of physi cians, who had asserted the little liability of women to gout. Pliny likewise remarks upon the increase of gout, even within his own time. Ovid and Lucian represent gout as mostly in curable by medicine; from this view of it Pliny dissents. The list of quack remedies given by Lucian is one of the most curious relics of an tiquity. Gout is both a local disorder and a gen eral perversion of nutrition. Consequent upon imperfect oxidation, there is found an excessive formation of uric acid, fats, and fatty acids, in stead of water, carbonic acid, and urea. Some times there is an excess of unoxidized sugar. The disease is a special manifestation of a tendency called the arthritic diathesis. (See DIATHESIS.) Baldness, pityriasis, acne, eczema, urticaria, prurigo, asthma, catarrhal inflammations of mu cous membranes, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, and neuralgia are often resultants of the same per version of nutrition that in some cases results in gout. Iritis and irido-clforoiditis are the most
common of the gouty inflammations of the eye. The external and middle ear, too, suffer from gout. Biliary lithiasis, visceral calculi, diabetes, obesity, hemicrania, and arthritis deformans are among the morbid affinities of gout. Gout is hereditary: and in some gouty families functional nervous diseases are very common among the descendants (especially the females) of gouty ancestors. But diet and mode of life are far more potent factors than heredity in its causa tion. Some families ascribe to heredity diseases that are actually due to living under the same faulty conditions of hygiene and dietetics, where by a morbid predisposition becomes established. Gout has disappeared from many localities in Europe step by step with the growth of tem perance and the acquisition of hygienic knowl edge.
Acute gout, however, followed by uratic de posits in the joints, is frequently transmitted in families. It is almost always a disease of adult age. Of the first attacks of gout in 515 cases (among Scudamore's statistics), one occurred at eight years, 57 between twenty and twenty-five years, 85 between twenty-five and thirty years, 105 between thirty and thirty-five years, 89 be tween thirty-five and forty years, 64 between forty and forty-five years, 54 between forty-five and fifty years, 2 at sixty-six years. Women are far less liable to acute gout than men. The character of food largely determines the amount of urea and uric acid produced in the body, and nitrogenous food is provocative of gout. Active muscular exercise and avoidance of great intel lectual exercise, avoidance of grief or anger, or disturbance of psychical balance, are valuable preventives of attacks, even in those who inherit the gouty tendency. Change of season favors gouty outbreaks, the spring and autumn fur nishing a large proportion of cases. Climate is a determining, though not decisive, cause. The free perspiration induced in warm countries is a safeguard against gout. Inhabitants of sub tropical and temperate regions suffer from latent gout and the allied disorders connected with the arthritic diathesis, independently of their dietetic errors. Thus, calculous disorders are frequent in Central Asia, and `uric acid diathesis,' or `lithm mia,' is prevalent all through the United States.