Treatment of gout in a recently published 9th century manuscript of Rhazes.

Gout is a common lifestyle disease and was identified by Hippocrates in the fifth century BC although the condition was known ancient Egypt some two millennia earlier. The pharmaceutical suggestions described in a recently edited manuscript, the oldest known medical manuscript of the Arab world, is presented, here for the first time. It is entitled Treatise on Gout by Rhazes, the greatest of Arab clinicians, and was written in the late 9th or early 10th century. Rhazes' pharmaceutics are presented in descriptive tables and their components are also compared with other recipes from manuscripts of the Galen and a recently edited medieval Syrian manuscript of Le Livre des simples (Tables 1-2). It is noteworthy that Rhazes insists that the drugs should be taken before sunrise and at down, showing ignorance of current knowledge of circadian rhythms. This is of interest as arthritis chronotherapy is widely discussed in recent literature.