The Doctor Will See You Now: Royal Illnesses and Injuries
In this blog post our volunteer Cathryn will be taking a look at some of the various injuries and illnesses that have plagued historical royals.
Henry V: Arrow removal
When he was Prince of Wales a young Henry V was shot in the face with an arrow at the Battle of Shrewsbury (21st July 1403). The arrow went in near his nose and penetrated 6 inches deep into his cheek. Henry was lucky to escape a near instantaneous death as the arrow missed his brain and spinal cord by millimetres. Despite being hit in the face with an arrow, Henry continued to fight on until victory was assured and was only then removed from the battlefield. Whilst the shaft of the arrow was removed easily, the arrowhead (a type called a bodkin) remained lodged in the prince’s face. When the usual methods of removing the arrowhead failed, Royal Surgeon John Bradmore devised an extractor, the Bradmore Extractor or Bradmore Screw to complete this task.
Bradmore widened the wound and then fed the tool into the wound. He then used the screw of the tool to pick up the arrowhead and remove it. Once the arrowhead was removed Bradmore was faced with another problem, preventing infection in the wound. In order to treat the wound, it was washed with white wine and then cleaned from the inside using a mix of rose honey and barley flour. Bradmore used a series of probes, or ‘tents’ as he called them wrapped in linen in order to do this. The wound was cleaned like this for 20 days with the probes made smaller so that the wound could heal over. The operation was successful, and Henry would be crowned king in 1413. The injury left scarring though, and this is why portraits of Henry V show him in profile.
Anne Boleyn: Sweating sickness
In 1528, Anne Boleyn then Henry VIII’s mistress caught the sweating sickness. The illness began with a feeling of apprehension alongside cold shivers, dizziness, a headache, abdominal pain, aches in the limbs, neck and shoulder and exhaustion. This cold stage would usually last between 30 minutes and 3 hours before the hot or sweating stage began. This next phase of the illness would see patients have an intense feeling of heat, alongside intense sweating, which had a particularly bad smell, a rapid pulse, an extreme feeling of thirst and delirium. In the final stages of the illness the patient would continue to have a sense of exhaustion and would either collapse or have a strong urge to sleep. If the patient survived the first 24 hours, then it was expected that they would make a full recovery. With a mortality rate between 30 and 50% the illness could kill within a few hours, and most deaths occurred within 18 hours. The rapid progress of the illness led chronicler Edward Hall to state in 1517 that patients could be, “merry at dinner and dead at supper.” Unlike other illnesses such as smallpox and plague surviving the sweating sickness did not give immunity, and there are records of people catching it several times.
The sweating sickness first appeared in 1485 and is often believed to have been bought over from France by mercenary soldiers fighting for Henry VII. This has been debated however, as records in York show a similar illness occurring there two months before Henry VII’s arrival. Other outbreaks occurred in 1508, 1517, 1528 and 1551 before disappearing. Outbreaks tended to happen in the summer and early autumn and seemed to affect mainly the upper classes, particularly young upper class men giving rise to the names ‘stoop gallant’ and ‘stoop knave’ for the illness. Sweating sickness has not been seen since the 1551 outbreak, although a similar albeit milder illness known as the Picardy Sweat was seen in France between 1718 and 1861. The 1528 outbreak was a severe one, and unlike the other outbreaks this one spread to the continent, with cases being seen in Hamburg before it spread north and east to Scandinavia, Poland and Russia. On hearing that Anne that was ill, Henry VIII sent his second most trusted physician Dr William Butts to treat her, (his most trusted physician being unavailable). The recommended treatment for sweating sickness was to lie still in bed with a light covering for 24 hours. During this time patients were also instructed to drink only lukewarm liquids, to avoid eating for as long as possible and to stay awake as it was believed that falling asleep would lead to death. Anne survived the illness alongside her brother and father, who also caught the illness. Anne’s brother-in-law William Carey was not so lucky and died during the 1528 outbreak.
Anne Boleyn may not be the only one of Henry VIII’s wives to catch the sweating sickness. It is believed that Catherine of Aragon caught the disease in 1502 during her marriage to Prince Arthur. The sweating sickness is believed to have killed Prince Arthur, who became ill around the same time as his wife, but his exact cause of death has been debated with other illnesses such as tuberculosis also being put forward as a cause of death. With the exception of the 1528 outbreak which spread onto the continent, the sweating sickness was very much a disease that affected the English. Although foreign nationals living in England, such as Catherine of Aragon caught the illness, it affected them much less giving the sweating sickness its’ name of the ‘English Sweat.’ Exactly what was this illness? Even today scientists and historians are unsure as to what exactly caused the sweating sickness. Theories for its’ cause include a hantavirus, a strain of influenza, and anthrax among others.
So there you have it, some of the medical problems that affected historical royals, and how the medics of the time treated them.