When King Charles II woke up feeling unwell, he did not expect that he would soon die ... at the hands of the court medics! This is why a doctor should not be trusted not only in the Middle Ages!
The tragic end of Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, began on February 2, 1685. It was then that the ruler woke up sick in the morning. Modern scholars of history and medicine maintain that his symptoms matched apoplexy, although more careful investigation suggests that Charles had kidney disease with uremic symptoms.
No matter where the truth lies, the "sudden" death of the king after four days of agony surprised his subjects and they began to spin conspiracy theories. Has Charles been poisoned? Certainly some people blamed the tragic descent of the court doctors ... and they were probably right!
A Dangerous Renaissance
Despite the undoubtedly important discoveries of the Enlightenment era, such as Ambrose Pare's refinement of the art of surgery, William Harvey's description of circulation, or the compilation (finally!) of complete anatomy atlases by Vesalius, patients still had reasons to be afraid of doctors. In most cases, medieval methods were still used , and these were - to put it briefly - most often not only painful, but also completely pointless. At the same time, the physician unsure of the practices used was not taken seriously, so everyone tormented the sick with power.
The description of Charles II's agony still gives shivers down the road
Molière even wrote about the state of medicine:
Doctors can speak Latin, they know all the old Greek names for diseases. But they have no idea of treating them ". During games during this period, it was jokingly said that " a sick person cannot demand to feel well "And" he who walks is not dead .
Despite the widespread mistrust and completely unsatisfactory results of doctors' work, someone had to heal, and all attempts at substantive scientific conclusions were most often referred to the past in advance.
The curious king
Charles II lived in the time of alchemists who were overwhelmed by the idea of turning lead into gold. The ruler himself was also interested in the subject (probably for political reasons), and his hobby developed after he hired a court physician to "develop and prepare medicines" in 1669. He liked the work on chemicals so much that he soon set up a small private laboratory. He spent time in it practically every morning, vigorously mixing various substances, heating, condensing and cooling them, in a word:not having the slightest idea what he was actually doing.
Charles II Stuart was interested in medicine, although… he was completely ignorant of it
Like many before and after him, he had an unlucky interest in mercury. Also, like his predecessors, he could poison himself with the fumes of this dangerous metal when heated in an open vessel. Was his death a foregone conclusion? One of the possible effects of mercury on the human body is kidney damage, as well as brain impairment. This could have resulted in gibberish speech, convulsions, and ultimately - attacks in the last days of the king's life.
Another argument for such a cause of Charles death was the abnormally high water content in his cerebral ventricles, which was discovered during the autopsy.
Help, doctors
Today it is difficult to define exactly what really killed Karol. One thing is certain:the doctors called to help did not help.
The first symptoms were noticed during the morning shaving. The cosmetic treatment was stopped immediately and half a liter of blood was dropped from the rulers. This, unfortunately, did not help, so another quarter of a liter was drawn off with the help of bubbles. Unfortunately, also without effect. The medics really had to get to work…
His Majesty was persuaded to ingest antimony, a toxic metal. He vomited, so he was given a series of enemas. His hair had been shaved and his scalp was smeared with burn agents to bring down any harmful mood
- we read in Nathan Belofsky's book "How He Was Treated Before". But that's not all.
Charles II was literally "massacred" by doctors
On Karol's feet, compresses soaked in various irritating substances were applied to attract "falling moods". Once again about a quarter of a liter of blood was dropped, and when the king began to weaken, sweets made of white sugar were served. Apparently it didn't help, so the doctors began to stab the patient's body with hot rods. The last treatment was the administration of forty drops of secretions "from the skull of a man who was not buried" and crushed stones from the intestines of an Indonesian goat. As you can guess, the latter treatments did not bring any positive effects either.
All this lasted for four days, after which Charles II died. Before he gave up his ghost, he apologized to everyone else that it took him so long.
Bibliography:
- Belofsky, N., How Was Treated Before, i.e. moss fillings and other stories. RM Publishing House, Warsaw, 2014.
- Fraser A., King Charles II. London:Phoenix Press, 2002.
- Hutton, R., Charles II:King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1989.