Health Issues Throughout History That Made People Think You Were Rich

Symptoms: Swelling, discomfort, and tenderness in the joints, often especially in the big toe.

Causes: Gout is caused by an excess of urate, uric acid salts that can build up in a person's kidneys and joints. It is a form of arthritis that can come with age.

Why It Impacted Elites: A rich, meat-heavy diet plays a major role in the development of gout, but it won't cause the condition alone. Being overweight and sitting around too much both contribute, as do complicating illnesses like high blood pressure and kidney problems, as well as the consumption of lead (which the upper classes used for silverware, drinking vessels, etc.). Because many believed gout was caused by a diet too expensive for common folk, it became identified as the "rich man's disease" since the time of the ancient Egyptians.

Notable People Affected: Henry VIII, Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, Samuel Johnson, and Jared Leto

Symptoms: Spontaneous aches, holes in teeth, and brown or black staining.

Causes: Excessive sugar, lack of fluoride, and inadequate toothbrushing.

Why It Impacted Elites: The English loved their sugar. By 1770, the English consumed five times as much sugar as they had in 1710. However, due to the high cost of cultivating and shipping it back from the New World, sugar was still an expensive commodity mostly restricted to the upper class.

Notable People Affected: Queen Elizabeth I, George Washington

Symptoms: Shortness of breath, palpitations, and increased likelihood of cardiac events.

Causes: Obesity, high cholesterol, and a sedentary lifestyle.

Why It Impacted Elites: In ancient Egypt, the upper classes were the only ones with regular access to richer foods like duck, beef, salted fish, and cheese, which caused high levels of cholesterol. In addition, the wealthy could avoid the kind of physical labor common among the lower classes.

Notable People Affected: Pharaoh Merneptah, Frederick Douglass, Bing Crosby

Symptoms: High blood pressure, joint and muscle pain, as well as mood disorders.

Causes: Exposure from water pipes, dishware, pottery, and soil.

Why It Impacted Elites: For much of the Middle Ages, the urban upper classes were eating and drinking from ceramic plates and cups glazed with lead. This kind of ceramic work was expensive, thus limited to the wealthy.

Notable People Affected: Beethoven, Caravaggio, Emperor Nero

Symptoms: Fever, discomfort, and soreness in muscles, as well as partial paralysis in extreme cases.

Causes: The poliovirus is transmitted through personal contact or infected food/water.

Why It Impacted Elites: Like chicken pox, polio is relatively safe if children are exposed to it at a young age, but the advent of modern sanitation during the early 20th century reduced the amount of the poliovirus in drinking water in developed nations. Children exposed to the disease at a later age suffered from more detrimental effects.

Notable People Affected: FDR, Frida Kahlo, Neil Young

Symptoms: Excessive bleeding, deep or large bruises, and blood in the urine or stool.

Causes: Hemophilia is caused by a deficiency in clotting factors in the blood.

Why It Impacted Elites: Because of royal intermarriage, most of the European nobility were closely related, and hemophilia was passed among the aristocracy. It is likely that hemophilia was introduced by a spontaneous mutation in Queen Victoria. While she didn't have the disease, she did carry the gene, which expressed itself much more frequently in the men of the House of Hanover.

Notable People Affected: Tsarevich Alexei, Richard Burton