Gout & Achievement

What did Frederick the Great, Sam uel Johnson, Ben Franklin and Grover Cleveland have in common? Answer:

gout. True enough, say Biochemist George Brooks and Social Psychologist Ernst Mueller, but the one-word diagnosis is far from complete. Those four famous men, along with many others, suffered from swollen, painful joints be cause their blood carried an excess of uric acid, which is a product of hu man metabolism. And the presence of that excess acid may explain their other basic similarities --their energetic and adventurous minds, their urge to ex cel and the high caliber of their achievement.

Anxious to check their theory, Brooks and Mueller gave 113 University of Michigan professors thorough physical and psychological examinations. Men with a higher than average uric-acid content in their blood, the two researchers report in the Journal of the A.M.A., scored significantly higher than the rest in such qualities as drive (the energy put into daily activities), leadership (the tendency to lead others, to manipulate people rather than things), and achievement (actual accomplishment, plus the degree of pride with which it was reported) --all personality traits, as dis tinct from IQ ratings.

At first reading, the research statistics also suggested a similarity between professors with high uric-acid content in their blood and those with high cholesterol levels. But further study showed a basic difference. The uric-acid types had strong drives; they reveled in their work.

Those with high cholesterol felt tired and overburdened by their work; they were ceaselessly struggling, without much pleasure, to reach a forever un attainable goal.

What all this means, say Brooks and Mueller, is that further study is necessary to check the possibility that uric acid serves as a stimulant to the higher cortical (reasoning) centers of the brain. The Ann Arbor observations also suggest that since a tendency to gout is inheritable, an aptitude for a high level of leadership and achievement may be inherited also. Gout is apparently as common as ever (20 times more common in men than in women), but it attracts much less attention nowadays because it can usually be controlled with drugs, such as colchicine and probenecid, and a diet that rigorously excludes such high-purine foods as sardines, anchovies, liver, kidneys and sweetbreads.

At the very least, the researchers conclude, their findings indicate that "a tendency to gout is a tendency to the executive suite."

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