Discovery of the first recorded use of “gout” as a medical term in history before AD 1000

The ancient Greek and Roman authors would refer to gout describing the anatomical site which was affected by the pain caused by the precipitation of urate crystals, such as chiragra (‘hand pain’—agra literally meaning “seizure”) and podagra (foot pain) [1]. The medical term “gout” stems instead from the Latin gutta, which in Medieval medicine involved the humoral theory, according to which the human body was regarded as containing a mix of the four fundamental humors, black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm, which governed its physiology and pathology.