From the back cover of Gout by Roy Porter & G.S. Rousseau – Amazon link.

This book provides a detailed and thoroughly referenced discussion of gout. I don’t recommended it for the non-technical minded, but if you want to read about the history and technical details of this disease, I recommend this book!

Gout, historically seen as a disease afflicting upper-class males of superior wit, genius,and creativity, gout has included among its sufferers Erasmus, the Medici, Samuel Johnson, Immanuel Kant and Robert Browning. It has also been the subject of powerful medical folklore, viewed as a disease that protects its sufferers and assures long life. This book investigates the history of gout and through it offers a new perspective on medical and social history, prejudice and class, and explainswhy gout was gender specific.

A marvellously scholarly, yet affectionate book.' – Michael Smith, The Lancet

'This book is as much a cultural as a medical history ... very good reading.' - Claude Rawson, New York Times Book Review

'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 totally supplants everything previously attempted in this vein,
and besides it is a lively and enjoyable reading experience.'
– Pat Rogers, Times Literary Supplement

Roy Porter is a 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, published by Yale University Press. G.S. Rousseau has been 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.