[Gout in the Zola's La joie de vivre]

The paper examines Emile Zola's novel La joie de vivre (1884) and one of its main characters, the gout. A medical historian finds the novel extremely interesting. Many questions arise: did Zola know anybody affected by the gout? Had Zola direct contacts with doctors or medics? The interesting point is, some years before the publication of the novel, in 1859, Garrod had identified the cause of this disease in the abnormal production of uric acid. Garrod's researches, and especially his case histories, are likely to have influenced Zola, the novelist.