Q 01/05

Compounds of which precious metal were injected into muscle for decades to slow rheumatoid arthritis?

A) Silver

B) Platinum

C) Gold

D) Iridium

Answer · why

C) Gold

Gold salts eased inflammation in rheumatoid joints, a treatment known as chrysotherapy. Side effects and slow action cut their use from the 1980s, and...

Q 02/05

A badly arthritic skeleton found at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in 1908 gave which extinct humans their stooped image?

A) Neanderthals

B) Denisovans

C) Cro-Magnons

D) Homo erectus

Answer · why

A) Neanderthals

Neanderthals were pictured slouching for over thirty years after Marcellin Boule rebuilt this old man with bent knees and a curveless spine, errors la...

Q 03/05

Which spoof award honoured Donald Unger, who cracked only his left knuckles for decades to test for arthritis?

A) Darwin Award

B) Ig Nobel Prize

C) Bulwer-Lytton Prize

D) Pigasus Award

Answer · why

B) Ig Nobel Prize

The Ig Nobel Prize for medicine went to Unger in 2009. Neither of his hands ever developed arthritis, and a larger study also found no link with knuck...

Q 04/05

Which French Impressionist painted for his last twenty years with rheumatoid arthritis crippling his hands?

A) Monet

B) Degas

C) Pissarro

D) Renoir

Answer · why

D) Renoir

Renoir developed the disease around 1892 and worked until his death in 1919. The tale that brushes were strapped to his fingers is false: an assistant...

Q 05/05

Which Founding Father, laid up with gout in June 1776, edited Jefferson's draft Declaration of Independence from home?

A) John Adams

B) Benjamin Franklin

C) Robert R. Livingston

D) Roger Sherman

Answer · why

B) Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was too disabled by gout to attend most Committee of Five meetings, so the draft was sent to him. He made a few small but important ...