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Galileo's Gout Gerald Weissmann, M.D. The author (AΩA, New York University, 1965) is Research ice-capped poles, one of those moons, Europa, seems the best Galileo’sGProfessora ofl Medicineile ando director’s of thegoutg Biotechnologyou t candidate yet as a habitat for extraterrestrial life.1 Earlier that Study Center at New York University School of Medicine. In year, Europe—the continent—filed its answer to the American 2002 he was elected to the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Global Positioning system; it shot a satellite into orbit and called as the sole American physician member. He is a previous it Galileo.2 Galileo’s own stock rose when physicists ranked two contributor to The Pharos. of Galileo’s experiments among “science’s 0 most beautiful experiments.”3 The year 2003 marked the four hundredth an- he first three years of our new millennium have niversary of the Accademia dei Lincei (established in Rome beenbeen bannerbanner yearsyears forfor GalileoGalileo (Galileo(Galileo Galilei,Galilei, 564–564– in 603), the world’s oldest scholarly society, of which, Galileo 642).642). IInn NNovemberovember 22002,002, oonene ooff NNASA’sASA’s llongest-ongest- was, dare we say, the star. To mark the occasion, a magisterial running missions came to an end when the Galileo spacecraft, volume by Columbia’s David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx launched in 989, made its final orbit of Jupiter, the planet showed how the new world view of Galileo and his Linceians whose four moons Galileo first described in 60. With its was an impetus for London’s Royal Society (660) and Colbert’s T Académie des Sciences (666).4 Finally, a definitive exhibition Above: Galileo presenting his telescope to the Doge, by Luigi on Albert Einstein at the American Museum of Natural History Sabatelli (1772–1850). Tribuno di Galileo, Museo della Scienza, credited Galileo with anticipating the notion of space/time in Florence, Italy. Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, New York. The Assayer (623):(623): 4 The Pharos/Autumn 2004 whenever I conceive any material or corporeal substance, I Sobel agree that (a) Galileo was indeed hobbled by “gouty” immediately feel the need to think of it as bounded, and as arthritis most of his days; (b) he suffered from frequent kidney having this or that shape; as being large or small in relation stones, bloody urine, and renal infections, of which he eventu- to other things, and in some specific place at any given time; ally died; (c) he suffered since mid-life from abdominal pains, as being in motion or at rest; as touching or not touching usually ascribed to a hernia for which he wore a heavy iron some other body; and as being one in number, or few, or truss; and finally, (d) not only was he a lifelong heavy drinker, many.5p274 but he presided over his own cottage winery, where metal- bound casks of wine often turned to vinegar. Physical proof? Galileo has affected the broader culture of our new mil- Although there are about half a dozen contemporary portraits lenium as well. Philip Glass and Mary Zimmerman premiered of Galileo extant, only one shows his hands. Painted late in their opera Galileo in Chicago, London, and New York. This Galileo’s life by his neighbor, Domenico Cresti, “il Passignano,” downtown version of the seventeenth- century face-off between the left hand shows tophi, interosseal atrophy, and flexion con- obstinate fact and adamant church gave British critics the last tractures. word: “Glass and Zimmermann not only insult the intelligence of their audience with their profoundly banal efforts, but also trivialise one of the greatest minds of the Renaissance.”6 In its own version of the fall classic, PBS’s “NOVA” featured the sev- enteenth- century World Series as “Galileo’s Battle for the Heavens.”7 The Cardinals won handily, presum- ably because of home-field advan- tage. As the Boston Globe delicately put it, “Galileo hobbles around his study, laments his illnesses, and ruminates on how he can open the eyes of the Church to the true nature of the universe.”8 Galileo had the last word on this matter in his famous letter to Castelli: Thus it appears that physical effects placed before our eyes by sensible The Gout. James Gillray (1757 - 1815). Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine. experience or concluded by neces- sary demonstrations should not in any circumstances be called in doubt by passages in Scripture that verbally have a different appearance. Not everything in Galileo was only one of many comfortable, wine- swilling Scripture is linked to such severe obligations as is every sages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who came physical effect.4p129 down with stones, podagra, or both: Saturnine gout.12 Among statesmen afflicted by gout were Philip II of Spain, Charles I suspect that current interest in the old match-up of V of the Holy Roman Empire, and all the Medicis. Giovanni, Scripture v. Physics has less to do with Galileo than with more father of the great Cosimo, was crippled by the disease, while recent contests such as Falwell v. Darwin or Scalia v. Freud, Cosimo himself became crippled later in life. His son Piero, Marx, and Einstein. But count me out. I’ve considered the father of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was called “il Gottoso.” issue moot ever since Pope John Paul II “forgave” Galileo in Lorenzo’s own son, Pope Leo X (a satyr if ever there was 992. I’m more interested in why Galileo was hobbling. one), suffered from swollen joints and kidney stones. Gout Prompted by The Eye of the Lynx and Dava Sobel’s deserv- struck the period’s greatest artists (Michelangelo, Peter Paul edly popular Galileo’s Daughter,10 I’ve concluded that Galileo Rubens, Claude Lorrain),11 poets, and scientists alike. Gouty was not only a victim of the Inquisition, but also of Saturnine John Milton is said to have sipped local wine with Galileo on (lead- induced) gout. His biographers, from Stillman Drake to a visit to Arcetri. Gout killed William Harvey, who in 602 had The Pharos/Autumn 2004 5 Galileo’s gout received his medical degree in Padua with 4 June 633: I am sorry that your Galileo’s doctor. Podagra tormented Isaac pains give you no respite, although it Newton and felled Wilhelm Leibniz, who seems almost requisite for the pleasure died of gout after a week of stomach “col- you take in drinking those excellent ick” (known as lead colic in later years). It’s wines to be counterbalanced by some probably no accident that this first wave of pain, so that, if you refrain from imbib- gout among the rich and famous prompted ing large quantities, you may avoid some Guillaume de Baillou in the early 600s to greater injury that could be incurred by draw the first distinction between “rheuma- drinking. tism” (rheumatic fever) and true gout.12,13 Good wine for the classes, strep throats During his detention, Maria Celeste for the masses, or, as Lord Chesterfield managed his home and wine cellar in quipped “Gout is the distemper of a gentle- Arcetri, from which much of Maria man, whereas the rheumatism is the dis- Suor Maria Celeste, daughter of Celeste’s own wine supply was derived: temper of a hackney coachman.”14 Galileo Galilei, by an unknown artist, 16th century. Torre del Gallo, Villa 8 October 633: Meanwhile, we have While Saturnine gout caused by lead- Galletti, Arcetri, Florence, Italy. laced wine or aqueduct water has been Photo credit: Alinari/Art Resource, New York. recovered one barrel from the farmers around since classical times,10 its greatest here, and had it put into the cask which epidemic followed the wholesale export of formerly held that spoiled wine; . at fortified Mediterranean wines to England and its colonies in my behest, Signor Rondinelli had a word with the black- the eighteenth century.15 Whatever the century, gout was only smith about the 3 barrels that he owes us, and brought back one consequence of chronic lead intoxication, or plumbism.16 his solemn promise on that score. Others are renal disease, abdominal pain (“lead colic”), con- stipation, headache, fatigue due to anemia, and early, severe I also have a hunch that poor Maria Celeste was herself a dental caries (the “lead line” on teeth).17–21 victim of plumbism. Her letters spell out a litany of chronic How does lead get into wine? While natural variations in headache, anguishing tooth pain, and recurrent bouts of in- the lead levels of ground water and irrigation systems con- testinal “obstructions” or “blockages.” In the years between tribute to the lead content of grapes, the major source is from 623 and March 634, when she succumbed to a bloody bout the winery itself. Lead from solder (the cooper’s work) leaches of explosive diarrhea, she was “so accustomed to poor health from the barrel, a process hastened when wine is spoiled or that I hardly think about it, seeing how it pleases the Lord acidified; lead seeps from bottle foils through wet corks, lead to keep testing me always with some little pain or other.” [23 leaches from soldered distillation tubes used to “fortify” wines November 623] such as grappa, brandy, or port.22 At age 28 (!) she wrote her father: Direct evidence for the origin of Galileo’s gout comes from his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste (600–634). Thanks to Dava 25 March 628: I tell you that I am following the doctor’s Sobel and Rice University’s “Galileo Project,” his daughter’s orders by not observing Lent, and that, being already mostly letters to Galileo are available on-line.23 toothless at my age.
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