Word: gout
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Long used as a remedy for gout, colchicine is a slightly poisonous alkaloid compound which occurs in the seeds of the meadow saffron or autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale. Two years ago Dr. Albert Francis Blakeslee, famed geneticist of the Carnegie Institution's station on Long Is land, announced the discovery of remark able effects produced on plants by colchicine (TIME, Nov. 8, 1937). The drug causes a doubling of the chromosomes (heredity carriers) in the germ cells of vegetables and flowers, producing sharp changes which breed true. It increased the growth rates of tobacco, phlox, onions, pumpkins, cosmos, radishes...
Convalescent from an attack of his family's chronic ailment, gout, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeared last week in the House of Commons for the first time in a fortnight. One of the first questions asked him was by Labor Leader Major Clement Richard Attlee: What steps did the Government propose to take to combat Germany's ruthless new Minenkrieg (mine warfare)? Mr. Chamberlain's reply startled the House and jarred the sensibilities of several nations. The Government, he said, would shortly authorize the Royal Navy to seize not only contraband goods suspected of going into...
...elder Pitt's] attacks of gout," said the Italian paper Telegrafo last week, "were the most splendid and memorable in British history. They are definitely linked with the conquest of Canada and India. In British statesmen [gout] acts as an imperialist stimulant. Beware if Mr.Chamberlain returns to the House of Commons . . . hobbling on crutches...
...stony deposits in the joints and in the cartilage of the ears. Frequently first to suffer is the joint of the big toe, then ankles, knees, hands and wrists. Common symptoms: cramps, inflammation, fever, headache, neuralgia, together with hot, itching feet (known to ancients as "the lisping of the gout...
Even doctors, some of whom have been "terrible sufferers," find it hard to speak of gout with a straight face. Some, like their patients, pride themselves on their virile infirmity. Osier quotes approvingly Germany's Willibald Pirkheimer (translated into English in 1617) : "I take no pleasure," he wrote, "in those hard, rough, rusticke, agresticke kind of people who are never at rest, but ... are moyling and toyling, do seldom or never give themselves to pleasure, do endure hunger, which are content with a slender diet...