Gout

From the book

The Anatomy of Melancholy

Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordGout names a painful bodily disorder, associated in these passages with the feet, hands and joints, but its historical range must be read locally.
In the Anatomy of MelancholyThe synopsis calls gout a “Particular” disease, contrasted with epidemic illness, and also allows melancholy to be mixed with it.
In this editionThe modern column normalises “gowts” to “gout” and “gowty” to “gouty.”
A place to readGowty benefactors as the satirical opposite of adequate public care.

Meaning

Gout names a painful bodily disorder, associated in these passages with the feet, hands and joints, but its historical range must be read locally. “Running gout” is imagined as moving from part to part; Paracelsus's “Gout” is a broad classificatory head that includes stone, colic and headaches. Neither usage should be silently confined to one present-day diagnosis. “Gowts” and “gowty” are spelling forms of the noun and adjective. The Latin family includes “Podagra” and “Podagram,” while a marginal patient narrative uses “gutta” and “guttosum.”

The disease is also personified: Lucian's gout becomes a goddess and a relentless “queen of diseases.” Burton borrows its literary reputation to represent melancholy's persistence and torment. A word can therefore designate an affliction, an organising medical category, a satirical social type or an emblem of pain; the local frame determines which work it does.

Use in the book

The synopsis calls gout a “Particular” disease, contrasted with epidemic illness, and also allows melancholy to be mixed with it. The fuller discussion repeatedly returns to such mixtures: reported consultations combine melancholy with gout, stones, fever and other complaints until neither species nor symptoms can be neatly sorted. Gout is not thereby another name for melancholy. It helps demonstrate the difficulty of assigning a mixed case to a single category. The Paracelsian scheme later makes it one of four principal classes, but Burton immediately rejects as too sweeping the associated proposition that a cure of the class cures every subordinate disease.

“Running gout” supplies an especially exact comparison for variability. Burton contrasts intermittent and continuous melancholy, fixed occasions and settled conditions, before describing a sufferer led here and there by imagination. The wandering joint-pain is the comparator, not the cause: as it shifts bodily location, melancholy can trouble one part after another or, with the body free, exercise the mind in countless forms. The neighbouring “arthritis” is a joint-disorder term in the same comparison. Its appearance here and beside gout in the lust catalogue does not make every occurrence a distinct modern disease category.

The bath narrative distinguishes benefit to one disorder from harm to another. Guianerius says he saw a man freed from gout at the baths who then became mad. The first-person witness is the cited authority, not Burton. Burton's own following qualification makes the judgement vary with the humour and the patient: what helps one may harm another. The marginal Latin specifies an overheated gouty person, adding a constitutional detail to the English body's story. Earlier claims that touch, spells or celestial knowledge can cure or explain gout belong to separate discussions of extraordinary causation and contested practice; they are not reconciled by the recurrence of the disease-name.

The reputation for incurability is powerful but carefully situated. In the adverse prognostics Burton takes Lucian's “queen of diseases” as an analogy for established melancholy. He then announces that what Lucian said of gout “in jest” he will say of melancholy “in earnest.” The ensuing verse addresses Melancholy as a hell-born Fury, so it is an adaptation, not an unchanged clinical description of gout. The Ovidian line about medicine's inability to remove “nodosam... Podagram” later supports a polemical account of medicine's limits. It recurs in the margin when some people compare jealousy to gout or soldiers entrenched in a castle. Burton answers that latter pessimism with “Yet”: the jealousy may be cured or at least mitigated if resisted early. That qualification concerns the melancholy under discussion, not a newly announced cure for gout.

Elsewhere the name is enrolled among claims of cure: wonder-workers purportedly “salve gouts,” saints are assigned particular illnesses, and medicinal plants are praised against gout as well as melancholy. Those assertions have distinct speakers and qualifications. The catalogue of extraordinary cures includes deceptive wonder-workers and alchemists; the saint list records Burton's polemical assignments rather than a verified inventory of practices; Dioscorides's praise of hellebore is accompanied by exclusions; Paracelsus's final refuge still excepts mineral medicine. These are textual records of competing authorities and expansive promises, not treatments recommended by this lexicon.

Gout also gives satire a recognisable body. The “gowty benefactors” in Burton's ideal commonwealth are wealthy men who compensate for lifelong extortion with a small charitable legacy; the next paragraph demands continuing public provision instead. Wealth is later answered with its supposed crop of “gowts” and other bodily and moral disorders, while excessive study also receives gout in its catalogue of harms. The disease does not therefore belong only to idle luxury in Burton's argument: both immoderate work and indulgence can recruit it as a warning. His hereditary-disease passages add a further explanatory route. In the Scottish report gout is Burton's addition to Boece's list, and the following paragraph rejects the stated punishments for Christians while retaining the demand for stricter control of marriage.

Erotic satire plays on gout's perceived incompatibility with youthful activity. A rich gouty suitor may still be preferred for his money; an old man with gouty feet is censured for pursuing young women. Gregory's “old gouty Bishop” declines a wedding invitation, whereas Nifo, “an old gowty fellow,” dances for love despite ridicule. The edition qualifies Gregory's example as a joke about his own condition, not a universal prohibition of dancing. The grotesque portrait of “gowty legs” and the later proposed allegation of gout use illness to challenge or destroy attraction. These passages show how observers weaponise bodily difference; they do not establish the worth, character or attractiveness of people with a disease.

The consolations move in another direction. Pirckheimer's gout is said not to have prevented public achievement, and the righteous person's hands may hurt while the “upright mind” remains free. Those arguments distinguish bodily suffering from inward defeat. They do not establish the sweeping historical claim that Pirckheimer governed all Germany, nor turn the accompanying maxim that intense pain lasts less time into reliable medical advice. Gout can be an image of nearly irresistible pain without making the sufferer intellectually or morally powerless.

Related entries

Baths and bathing and Adust own the fuller hot-bath and overheated-constitution argument. Symptoms and signs and Disease and sickness explain mixed cases and contested classes. Hospital follows the attack on inadequate charity; Venery, Love and Jealousy supply the different erotic frames. Prognostics distinguishes adverse predictions from their qualifications.

Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.

Places to read

Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 6Gowty benefactors as the satirical opposite of adequate public care.
Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 7Context: public support according to need replaces belated private compensation.
In Considering Diseases: Section 1, Member 1 · paragraph 12Gout classified as particular rather than epidemic.
Necessary Causes: The Six Non-Natural Things. Section 2, Member 2 · paragraph 53Gout among diseases mixed with melancholy.
Subsection 4. The Species or Kinds of Melancholy · paragraph 55Mixed consultation cases make classification difficult.
Subsection 3 Witches and Magicians: How They Cause Melancholy · paragraph 52A cited claim of cure by touch.
Subsection 4. The Stars as a Cause. Signs From Physiognomy, Metoposcopy and Chiromancy · paragraph 7Astrological knowledge claimed as necessary even for gout.
Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 44Gout in a hereditary-disease catalogue.
Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 22Gout in Burton’s version of the Scottish coercion report.
Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 23Context: rejection of those punishments and continued advocacy of control.
Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 21Bath cure exchanged for madness; the marginal guttosum and gutta.
Subsection 2. The Power of Imagination · paragraph 27Gout in claims of cures by spells and charms.
Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraph 26Gout among the asserted consequences of excessive study.
Subsection 4 Symptoms Arising From Education, Custom, Duration, Our Circumstances, Mingled With Other Diseases, Occurring in Fits, From Inclination, and So On · paragraph 11Running gout and arthritis as comparisons for shifting melancholy.
Subsection 4 Symptoms Arising From Education, Custom, Duration, Our Circumstances, Mingled With Other Diseases, Occurring in Fits, From Inclination, and So On · paragraph 28Repeated difficulty separating mixed symptoms.
Section 4 Member 1 Prognosis of Melancholy · paragraph 9Lucian’s relentless queen as an analogy for established melancholy.
Section 4 Member 1 Prognosis of Melancholy · paragraph 23Burton announces the transfer from gout in jest to melancholy in earnest.
Section 4 Member 1 Prognosis of Melancholy · paragraph 24Context: the adapted Latin verse names Melancholy.
Section 4 Member 1 Prognosis of Melancholy · paragraph 26Context: the ensuing verse claims pain beyond cure.
Section 4 Member 1 Prognosis of Melancholy · paragraph 27Context: Burton’s English adaptation makes the same transfer.
The Second Partition. The Cure of Melancholy. Section 1. Member 1. Subsection 1. Unlawful Cures Rejected · paragraph 39“Salve gouts” among extravagant claims of wonder-working.
Member 3. Whether It Is Lawful to Seek the Saints' Help in This Disease · paragraph 25Gout in the polemical catalogue of patron saints.
Member 3. Whether It Is Lawful to Seek the Saints' Help in This Disease · paragraph 27Podagra personified as a goddess.
Subsection 3. Concerning Medicine · paragraph 6Gout as a broad principal head in the Paracelsian classification.
Subsection 3. Concerning Medicine · paragraph 7Context: Burton rejects a universal inference about cure.
Member 2 Bodily Deformity, Sickness, Low Birth, and Particular Discontents · paragraph 16Bodily gout contrasted with continuing public and mental activity.
Member 3 Against Poverty and Want and Other Such Adversities · paragraph 43Context: the apparent advantages of wealth voiced as an objection.
Member 3 Against Poverty and Want and Other Such Adversities · paragraph 44Gowts in the answer about wealth’s bodily and moral costs.
Member 3 Against Poverty and Want and Other Such Adversities · paragraph 28Painful hands distinguished from defeat of an upright mind.
Member 1 Subsection 1 Medical Treatment by Medicines · paragraph 17Gout in the attack on medical limits.
Member 1 Subsection 1 Medical Treatment by Medicines · paragraph 18Ovid’s nodosam Podagram and the imagery of knotted swelling.
Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraph 37Hellebore praise accompanied by restrictions in the cited authority.
Subsection 2 Single Substances That Purge Melancholy Downwards · paragraph 33Gout in the claim for a final herbal refuge, with a mineral exception.
Subsection 2 How Love Tyrannizes Over Human Beings. Love, or Heroical Melancholy: Its Definition and the Part Affected · paragraph 23Repeated gouts and arthritis in the moralised catalogue of lust’s consequences.
Subsection 2 How Love Tyrannizes Over Human Beings. Love, or Heroical Melancholy: Its Definition and the Part Affected · paragraph 44Gouty feet in satire of the ageing lover.
Artificial Attractions of Love and Incitements to Lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and So On · paragraph 7The gouty rich suitor chosen for wealth.
Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraph 44The gouty bishop’s refusal of a wedding invitation.
Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 30Context: the hostile observer’s catalogue of a beloved’s appearance.
Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 31Gowty legs within that grotesque catalogue.
Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 32Context: the lover admires despite the observer’s accusations.
Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 32The old gouty philosopher dances under love’s command.
Resist the Beginnings, Avoid Occasions, Change One’s Location; Fair and Foul Means, Contrary Passions and Ingenious Devices; Introduce Another Love and Disparage the Former · paragraph 51Gout as an allegation intended to break attachment.
By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men and Women, the Miseries of Marriage, the Consequences of Lust, and So Forth · paragraph 51Gouty legs in rhetoric against idealised appearance.
The Cure of Jealousy: Avoiding Occasions for It, Keeping Occupied; Good Counsel; Disregarding It, Not Watching Women or Locking Them Up; Concealing It, and So On · paragraph 16Gout and an occupied castle as comparisons for supposedly incurable jealousy.
The Cure of Jealousy: Avoiding Occasions for It, Keeping Occupied; Good Counsel; Disregarding It, Not Watching Women or Locking Them Up; Concealing It, and So On · paragraph 19Context: Burton answers that jealousy may be cured or mitigated.

In this edition

The modern column normalises “gowts” to “gout” and “gowty” to “gouty.” It renders “running gout” as “wandering gout,” preserving movement rather than suggesting physical exercise, and “those often Gouts” as “repeated attacks of gout.” In the Ovid quotation it makes “nodosam” explicit as “knotted swellings”; “Podagram” itself names the disease and does not independently supply those swellings.

Marginal evidence is kept distinct from the body. Guianerius's Latin supplies “guttosum” and “gutta”; the Latin on Gregory's invitation and on Nifo's dancing supplies “podagricum.” The Nifo margin gives seventy years and flute-players, whereas the body says old and fiddlers. Likewise the supplied notes locate parallels for Gregory and Ovid but leave several Lucian intermediaries and historical attributions unresolved. The article uses those limits instead of presenting all citations as independently collated.

The painful bodily disease, here distinguished as a particular rather than epidemic condition.

Original wording: “Or Particular; as Gout, Dropsie”

Modern wording: “Or particular, such as gout, dropsy”

Particular locates the disease within Burton’s classification; it does not mean a personally unusual variety. Elsewhere the name is associated with painful hands, feet and joints, and also with mixed melancholy cases.

Editorial access forms: gout; gowt. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked attestations: the passage: “The gout may hurt his hands”.

running gout

Pain thought to move from one bodily part or joint to another.

Original wording: “like an arthritis or running gout”

Modern wording: “Like arthritis or wandering gout”

Running describes shifting location. The phrase is a comparator for the variability of melancholy; it does not identify gout as the cause of that variability.

Editorial access forms: wandering gout. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

arthritis

A joint disorder, associated here with wandering gout in a comparison.

Original wording: “like an arthritis or running gout”

Modern wording: “Like arthritis or wandering gout”

The surrounding explanation refers to disturbance here, there and in every joint. The word is historical in scope and is not silently assigned a particular modern inflammatory diagnosis.

Editorial access forms: Arthritis. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked attestations: the passage: “Gouts, Pox, Arthritis”.

Gout (principal head)

A broad class under which other painful disorders are placed in the reported Paracelsian scheme.

Original wording: “To Gout, Stone, Cholick, Tooth-ach, Head-ach”

Modern wording: “under gout, the stone, colic, toothache, headache”

This is classification by a principal head, not an assertion that every listed illness is medically identical. Burton disputes the ensuing inference about universal cure.

Editorial access forms: gout class. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

queen of diseases

A personification of gout as commanding and unyielding, transferred to melancholy.

Original wording: “she was the queen of diseases, and inexorable”

Modern wording: she was “the queen of diseases, and inexorable,”

Inexorable means not yielding to entreaty. Burton applies the cited Lucian image to established melancholy, giving persistence the character of an implacable ruler.

Editorial access forms: inexorable gout; regina morborum (marginal Latin equivalent). These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked marginal attestation: the accompanying note: “Regina morborum & inexorabilis.” The queen of diseases, and inexorable.

Podagra

Gout personified as a goddess.

Original wording: “Lucian makes Podagra the gout a goddess”

Modern wording: “Lucian makes Podagra, gout, a goddess”

Burton explicitly glosses the name with “the gout” and assigns priests and ministers to the personification. This literary example serves his comparison of religious responses to disease.

Editorial access forms: podagra. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

nodosam ... Podagram

Knotted or nodular gout in the quoted poetic claim about medicine’s limits.

Original wording: “Tollere nodosam nescit medicina Podagram”

Modern wording: “Medicine cannot remove the knotted swellings of gout”

Podagram is the disease-name as object; nodosam supplies the knotty quality. The modern edition expresses that adjective through the noun “swellings.” The sentence is a quoted maxim, not this lexicon’s medical prognosis.

Editorial access forms: nodosam podagram; podagram. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked attestations: the passage: “like the Gout”.

gowty; gouty

Afflicted with gout, frequently used to characterise a satirical figure.

Original wording: “an old gowty fellow”

Modern wording: “old and gouty as he was”

The disease adjective heightens the contrast between bodily infirmity and energetic dancing. The passage attributes the anecdote and censure to Giovio; the margin supplies further details absent from the body.

Editorial access forms: gouty; gowty. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked attestations: the passage: “gowty benefactors”; the passage: “an old gouty Bishop”; the passage: “gowty legs”; the passage: “gouty legs”.

Gouts; gowts

The plural disease-name; in the “often” construction, recurrent attacks.

Original wording: “those often Gouts”

Modern wording: “repeated attacks of gout”

The local modifier makes recurrence explicit. Elsewhere plural gowts is rendered simply as the disease-name gout, so the same plurality should not be forced into an attack-count in every occurrence.

Editorial access forms: gouts; gowts. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked attestations: the passage: “aches, crudities, gowts”.

guttosum; gutta

A gouty person; gout, in the Latin marginal bath narrative.

Original wording: “quandam guttosum vidi adustum, qui ut liberaretur de gutta”

Modern wording: “a gouty person with an overheated constitution who went to the baths to be freed of gout”

Guttosum characterises the sufferer; gutta names the disease. The marginal adustum adds the overheated constitution, whose fuller explanation belongs to Adust. The supplied note retains the printed grammatical irregularity quandam.

Editorial access forms: guttosus (dictionary headword); de gutta. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

podagricum

Gouty, modifying the old man in the Latin wedding anecdote.

Original wording: “inter saltantes podagricum videre senem, & Episcopum”

Modern wording: “to see a gouty old man, and a bishop, among the dancers”

The adjective helps explain why the speaker considers himself an incongruous guest. It also appears in the Nifo margin, where love makes the old philosopher dance despite his gout.

Editorial access forms: podagricus (dictionary headword). These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked attestations: the accompanying note: “Philosophum podagricum”.