Abstract: BACKGROUND: Uric acid, which serves no biochemical function other than being an end product of purine metabolism, was first discovered in 1776. A Swedish chemist Scheele isolated it from a urinary tract stone. In 1797, a British chemist Wallaston detected uric acid in a tophus which was removed from his own ear. About 50 years later Alfred Baring Garrod, a British physician showed by chemical isolation that uric acid was abnormally high in gouty patients. In subsequent studies Garrod formulated a rational relationship between hyperuricemia and symptomatology of gouty patients.