Wine or Pollen

In the U.S., an estimated 1,250,000 people (about 95% of them men) suffer from gout. It can be an embarrassing ailment, because most people--including many doctors--have long associated gout with high living and heavy drinking.* Eighteenth Century British Surgeon John Hunter, who had gout himself, said bluntly that "most people who have had the gout severely have deserved it." Physiologist Erasmus Darwin, who drank little except cowslip wine, announced flatly in 1794: "I have seen no person afflicted with gout who has not drank freely of fermented liquor . . ."

From these, long-accepted opinions many modern physicians dissent. Manhattan Allergist Joseph Harkavy of Mt. Sinai Hospital goes a step farther. Gout is not necessarily due to rich food & drink, he thinks; it may be due to something that gets into noses as well as into gullets.

Gout, Dr. Harkavy announced last week in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, may be set off by an allergy. Starting out three years ago to find out what causes gout, Dr. Harkavy noticed that it attacks its victims most frequently in the spring and fall. He thinks he has found one of the answers in pollen from grass and trees in the spring, from ragweed in the fall. Pollen, he says, can be the trigger that sets off a series of reactions that wind up as a pain in the big toe; it may be pollen by itself, or in combination with certain foods, plain or fancy, to which certain people are sensitive.

The Harkavy theory has worked out in three cases so far. Two men and a woman who had attacks of gout in the spring or fall were found to be sensitive to pollens, as well as to certain foods. Harkavy brought on attacks by injecting the pollens. When they were immunized against the pollens, and avoided the troubling foods, two of the patients were free of gout. The classical remedy--colchicine--gives relief from pain. But the trick is to find out what the victim is allergic to, says Harkavy. It might be the grapes of the rich man's champagne or his rare roast beef; it might be the poor man's cabbage or the malt and hops in his beer.

*Among gouty notables: Kubla Khan, Alexander the Great; U.S. President James Buchanan, British Prime Ministers Disraeli, Palmerston, Melbourne, Canning, the Pitts, Neville Chamberlain; John Milton, Martin Luther, Tennyson, Benjamin Franklin, John Barrymore.

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