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In our days of ultraspecialization, it is not unusual for one physician to become a
connoisseur not only of a single disease but sometimes even of a fragment of a disease.
In many respects Talbott has made gout his own particular property. Not only does he
share this disease with many others but his special knowledge is founded upon a broad basis
of clinical experience and wide knowledge of general physiology and environmental physiology.
This second edition of his essay on gout is notable for combining a delightful historical
flavor with the most up-to-date views about this distressing and still very refractory and
irksome metabolic disease. We do not know the cause of gout, despite the fact that we have
included it among the inborn errors of metabolism. Newer concepts about the metabolic
pool of uric acid, its intermediary metabolism, the mechanisms whereby tubular blockade in
the kidneys permit the