A Most Romantic Illness

For the past several weeks, I've been tormented by terrible pains in my feet. One joint or another becomes so severely inflamed and swollen that I can't take a step without gasping in agony; the foot becomes so sensitive that I can't bear to have a sheet touching it at night. The other day, I consulted my podiatrist, who told me, "Sounds like you've got gout."

My immediate reaction was, that while I did not particularly want to be afflicted, if I had to have some sort of foot disorder, that is precisely what I would have chosen. To prove to myself just how lucky I was, I reported the doctor's diagnosis to several of my friends. Their nearly unanimous response was, "Whoa! COOL!"

Contracting a glamour illness, which gout certainly is, is a rare thing, and as long as it's not terminal, or permanently crippling, it's very nearly a cause for celebration.

Gout is a "rich man's illness," much more common in the 17th and 18th centuries than it is today. It's an acidic imbalance in the blood-a mild form of uremic poisoning-which leads to inflammation of the joints, typically in the big toe or elsewhere on the foot. It's usually caused by bingeing on certain rich foods, and on red wine. (My diet's pretty lean, I seldom drink red wine, and I never binge on anything, so it's a mystery to me how I could have been blessed with this disorder.)

OK, those are the hard facts of gout. But the facts are nothing compared to the fancy. The pain is quite a reasonable price to pay for the romance of the thing.

"Gout." The word, standing on its own, could be a picture:

In his dimly-lit but spacious counting-house, Lord Fiddlefaddle sits at his enormous mahogany desk, poring over ledgers listing the revenues from his slave-ships, his plantations in the New World, and his interests in the British East India Company. He's wearing a beautiful bottle-green velvet coat with gold facings, gold velvet knee-britches, long lace jabot and lace shirt-cuffs, and a long, white, full-bottomed wig. At his elbow is a decanter of madeira; he's seen delicately taking snuff from a silver snuff-box as he scrutinizes his profits through primitive-looking nose-glasses.

One of His Lordship's feet wears an elegant buckled shoe; the other, propped up on a hassock, is swathed in bandages.

Standing solicitously behind him, as if waiting for orders, is a skinny, stoop-shouldered clerk, dressed in a dull brown suit and a wig that could do with a fresh coat of powder. On the floor, two dogs play tug-of-war with an immense bone, while a third looks inquisitively up at the nobleman, as much as to say, "What's the matter with your foot, kind Master?" In the background, an eccentric-looking man in black, with lancets and other surgical instruments bulging out of his pockets, and a book under his arm labeled "Physick," examines the contents of His Lordship's chamber-pot.

I have only just now composed this painting in my mind, but if it were executed, it could certainly be passed off as "Gout," a satirical work by an anonymous artist, after William Hogarth, circa 1750.

For glamour and romance, the only thing that whips gout is tuberculosis-which is usually fatal, so most of us wouldn't consider it worth the hassle. But an awful lot of famous people died gloriously coughing themselves to death-Fr�d�ric Chopin, Vivien Leigh, Doc Holliday, Franz Kafka, and the mother of practically every heroine of every romantic novel of the Victorian era. It was quite the thing to have TB. You died young and in horrible pain, but in the meantime you were soulful and ethereal, with a bright eye and a flushed cheek, with the intense emotions and the heightened sexual drive to which tuberculars were subject. And when your time finally came, you had a pile of love-letters ten feet high at your bedside, and volumes of bad poetry written by the prettiest girls, or the handsomest young men, from 50 miles around.

Nothing else can quite come up to gout or tuberculosis, although modern times have brought us other mildly glamourous illnesses. From the 1950s to the present, a chronically bad tummy has been strong evidence that you're a player. A bottle of Maalox or Mylanta on your desk is almost as blatant a status symbol as a cellular phone held against your ear as you walk down the street.

Emotional disorders aren't considered nearly as classy as they once were, but it wasn't too long ago-the 60s and 70s, mainly-when psychoanalysis was something you bragged about. First of all, it indicated that you could afford this Rolls Royce of psychotherapy. Second, that you were being plagued by a whole gang of really interesting demons. Third, that even though you were still being treated for a serious disorder, you had risen above it enough to have made a success of your life after all. Fourth (and perhaps most important), it was a sly way of telling everyone that your mother was a shit.

But a gyppy tummy isn't really all that interesting: My creative juices aren't quite up to composing a Hogarthian masterpiece entitled, "Dyspepsia." And while undergoing psychoanalysis might make you superficially and briefly interesting to other people, it's not the sort of trouble that will make anyone write you a poem, in lovely calligraphy on the finest cream laid paper, done up with a bright bit of ribbon.

Sure, given the choice, I'd just as soon not have gout. But I found it a mighty handy excuse, this morning, to go out and buy a classy walking-stick. Never did a man limp home with more �lan.

-Josephus Rex Imperator

copyright 2000 by Joseph Dobrian