ROMAN EMPIRE'S FALL IS LINKED

WITH GOUT AND LEAD POISONING

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: March 17, 1983

The bacchanalian appetites of ancient Rome caused a widespread incidence of

gout among the aristocracy, including most of the emperors, and therein lies a
strong clue, according to a Canadian researcher, that lead poisoning contributed
to the fall of the Roman Empire.
Much of the food and wine the Romans consumed to such excess was
contaminated with amounts of lead far exceeding today's safety standards.
Accumulations of lead in the body can cause one form of gout, a painful and
sometimes crippling inflammation of the joints, as well as the mental retardation
and erratic behavior normally associated with lead poisoning.
Reviewing the personalities and habits of Roman emperors from 30 B.C. to 220
A.D., Dr. Jerome O. Nriagu, a Canadian scientist, found that two-thirds of them,
including Claudius, Caligula and Nero, ''had a predilection to'' lead-tainted diets
and suffered from gout and other symptoms of chronic lead poisoning. He
reported his conclusions in the issue of The New England Journal of Medicine
published today.
''The coexistence of widespread plumbism [lead poisoning] and gout during the
Roman Empire seems to have been an important feature of the aristocratic life
style that has not been previously recognized,'' Dr. Nriagu wrote. ''This provides
strong support for the hypothesis that lead poisoning contributed to the decline
of the Roman Empire.''
The hypothesis has been proposed before, but Dr. Nriagu marshaled more
evidence of the gout-lead poisoning link in explaining Rome's supposedly
terminal affliction. Dr. Nriagu, who is on the staff of the National Water
Research Institute in Burlington, Ontario, is writing a book on the subject.
Not only did the Romans drink legendary amounts of wine, he noted, but they
flavored their wines with a syrup made from simmered grape juice that was
brewed in lead pots. The syrup was also used as a sweetener in many recipes
favored by Roman gourmands.
Name: Marcus Burdick

Reading Informational Text - Citing Evidence & Inferences

DIRECTIONS:

1) Read and annotate (make notes on) the informational nonfiction article. Examples of
annotations:
-I think
-I wonder
-I can predict

-This is similar to
-This is an example of
-I can relate

-This word might mean

-This reminds me of

1) Make one inference (reasonable guess based on evidence in text) about the main idea
of the topic.
1. I can infer that that the Romans would have no idea about gout otherwise they
would have made a painkiller or maybe even a cure because they were so good at
making stuff. It reminds of the famous saying, necessity is the mother of invention.

1) Go back to the article and highlight 1-2 pieces of textual evidence to support this
inference.

1) Write a paragraph(s) supporting your inference by citing at least one piece of evidence
(look back at your highlighted evidence). There is an example template below, but you
may change it to make it your own.
How to cite: Put what you copy word-for-word from the article in quotation marks.

In the article, Roman Empires Fall is Linked with Gout and

Lead Poisoning, I can infer that the Romans had to have absolutely no idea
about lead poisoning otherwise they would have made a painkiller or maybe
even a cure because they were so good at making new things. It reminds me
of the saying, Necessity is the mother of invention. One piece of evidence I
have is Much of the food and wine the Romans consumed to such excess

was contaminated with amounts of lead far exceeding today's safety

standards. This shows that they did not have any safety standards meaning
that they had no idea of the side effects of lead poisoning otherwize they
would have put more standards on how much lead they could put in their
wine, if any at all. Overall, it all seems like something that Romans could
have found if they didnt get condemned for mistreating the Visigoths,
which set forth on them the dark ages of Rome and eventually their
downfall.