The opinion of the majority of eminent medical men, during recent years, is that uric acid is not a cause, but a symptom of gout, that uric acid is not an irritant to the tissues, and that it is readily excreted in the healthy subject.  Some of the reasons for this latter and against the previously stated hypothesis, are as follows:—­Birds very rarely suffer from gout—­the nodular concretions, sometimes found about their joints and which have been ascribed to gout, are of tuberculous origin—­yet their blood contains more uric acid than that of man, and the solid matter of their excretion is mainly urates.  If uric acid caused gout we should expect the disease to be common in birds.  It is a remarkable fact that the waste nitrogen should be excreted in the form of uric acid or urates from such widely differing classes of animals as birds and serpents.  Birds have a higher body temperature than man, they are very rapid in their movements and consume a large amount of food proportionate to their weight.  They live, as it were, at high pressure.  Serpents, on the other hand, have a low body temperature, they are lethargic and can live a long while without food.  There is no obvious reason why some animals excrete urea and others uric acid.  As uric acid is a satisfactory and unirritating form in which waste nitrogen is expelled from the body of the active alert bird, as well as from the slow moving reptile, it is surprising if a very much smaller quantity acts as a poison in man.  Many physicians are convinced that uric acid is absolutely unirritating.  Uratic deposits may occur to an enormous extent in gouty persons without the occurrence of any pain or paroxysms.  Urates have been injected in large amounts into the bodies of animals as well as administered in their food with no toxic result whatever, or more than purely local irritation.  The most careful investigations upon the excretions of persons suffering from gouty complaints, have failed to show uric acid in the excretions in excess of that in normal individuals, except during the later stage of an acute attack.  There is an excess of uric acid in the blood of gouty subjects; some eminent medical men say it is in the highest degree probable, that this excess is not due to over production or deficient destruction, but to defective excretion by the kidneys.  The excess may arise from failure of the uric acid to enter into combination with a suitable substance in the blood, which assists its passage through the kidneys.  Under the head of gout are classed a number of unrelated disturbances in the gastro-intestinal tract and nutritive organs, whose sole bond of union is that they are accompanied by an excess of urates, and in well developed cases by deposits in the tissues.  This is why there are so many different causes, curative treatments, theories, contradictions and vagaries in gout.  There are good reasons for believing that uric acid is not in the free state in the body.  In the urine it is in combination with alkalies as