God Save the King

"A wise surgeon," warned a wise 13th century surgeon, "will refrain from stealing while he is in attendance on a patient." Other maxims for medieval physicians, who found Hippocrates rather hoary: impress the patient by diagnosing his condition before examination, always tell relatives the case is very grave, assume that a fast pulse only means worry over your fee. Last week British physicians were chuckling over dozens of such memories, recalled in Call the Doctor, by Ernest S. Turner, a frequent Punch contributor whose previous social histories have deflated the egos of British reformers, admen and Blimps.

Author Turner's most savage anecdotes are from the annals of court medicine. In a day when only God could save a King, a typical court quack was John of Gaddesden (probably Chaucer's "verrey parfit practisour"). John went so far as to publish a list of ailments that, financially, were beneath his notice. His gaudiest feat: curing Edward I's son of smallpox by swaddling the boy in scarlet robes, confining him to a room hung with scarlet drapes, claiming that the color's influence turned the trick. The 17th century court physician had less brass. When France's young Louis XIV caught syphilis, the doctors were too spineless to tell him (or anyone else). They also disguised the Sun King's measles by reporting that the royal body was triumphantly expelling subversive tapeworms.

Meane Treatment. To hide their ignorance (and save their skins), court doctors went to lengths that gave royalty sparse chance of survival. During the last hours of Prince Henry, eldest son of England's James I, the doctors were terrified of hurrying the process and thereby literally getting the ax. Not daring to bleed the youth as much as they wanted to, they finally decided to try treating him "as if he was some meane person." They bisected a rooster, attached the reeking halves to Henry's royal soles, which at least allowed him to keep most of his blood until he died soon after.

"Among the sad stories of the deaths of kings," says Author Turner, "the account of Charles II's last days is a horror-comic." When the monarch fell ill of kidney disease on a Sunday evening, Dr. Edmund King braved a death sentence by bleeding Charles without consent of his ministers. Next day they forgivingly voted Dr. King -L-1,000, but sent in so many other doctors (18) that he was nearly crowded out of the royal chamber. For five days, writes Turner, the panicky new platoon tried everything on Charles except rest and privacy.

Dung & Skull Juice. "To drain off his blood they put cupping glasses to his shoulders, scarified his flesh and tapped his veins. Then they cut off his hair and laid blisters on the scalp, and on the soles of his feet they applied plasters of pitch and pigeon dung. To remove the humors from his brain they blew hellebores up his nostrils and set him sneezing. To make him sick they poured antimony and sulphate of zinc down his throat. To clear his bowels they gave him strong purgatives and a brisk succession of clysters. To allay his convulsions they gave him spirit of human skull . . .

"Into the scarred and blistered hulk of a king they sent now sedatives, now depth charges . . . When the hulk slept, they woke it; when it spoke, they silenced it. In and out of the chamber passed physicians, priests, ministers, servants. On Thursday night the king's mind was clear and undimmed. On Friday morning they drew twelve more ounces of weak Stuart blood and then gave him heart tonics. He did not give in until noon, after apologizing for being so long in dying."

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