The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1877-11-22
The Diseases Of Great Men.

Some Of the most illustrious men and
women have been the victims of NAL
aides of the nervous system. In almost
every treatise on epilepsy, Caesar, Ma
homet, Petrach, Napoleon and Byron
are mentioned as having been subject to
this disease. Henry ~, of England,
after some time of ill-health, became
subject to dreadful fits, which would
cause him to fall down apparently dead.
These were undoubtedly epileptic in
character. On the Goth of March, 1413,
while he was at church, he was seized
with fit and soon expired, being at the
time forty-seven years old Charles ii.
of England, in the midst of life of
vicious indulgence, was attacked by apo
plexy, and died after few days ill
ness, on the 9th of February, 1856, in
the fifty fifth year of his life. Among
the apoplectics we have such notable
characters as Dickens, Thackeray and
NapoleonI.
History furnishes abundant evidence
of the frequency of affections of the
mind among the magnates. Bishop
Warburton, John George Zimmerman,
DIR. johnson, james v, Of Scotland,
King Henry, of England, Queen Eliza
beth, Frederick H., of Prussia, were all
the victims of melancholia Queen
Francisco, of Portugal, George III, of
England, Tasso, Pascal, William Collier,
Cowper, Charles XII, and DR.. John
son were subject to attacks of insanity.
Of the three disputed discoverers of
modern anesthesia, Wells died of insan-
ity, Morton from stroke of apoplexy,
while Jackson is hopelessly insane. DR..
Adam Clarke died of cholera; Oliver
Cromwell of ague; Robert Duke of
starvation; Sir Humphrey Davy, as q
result of injuries to an elbow; Alexan-
der the Great of malarial fever; Angus
tus II. of gangrene of an old wound;
Camillus of plague; Chaucer of old
age; Queen Mary of smallpox; John
Racine of abscess of the liver; Napoleon
iii. died of embolism; Prince William,
of England, and Shelley were both
drowned; Thomas Chatterton and the
wife of Shelley committed suicide; Lord
Byron fell victim of remittent fever;
John Keats, Edward II. and LBnnec
were destroyed by phthisis pulmonalis;
John Locke was sufferer with asthma;
Burns shortened his days by his ex-
cesses; Southey and Swift died dement,
euS oeIelny ldylor uleu VI soue leNer, I,
John Bunyan aied in 1888, in London,
it is said, in consequence of cold
caught in a journey undertaken by him
in inclement weather, with the object of
reconciling father and son; Thomas
Otway, perhaps choked. His death has
been frequently cited as striking in
stance of the miseries of literary ca
reer. 1t is related that, when almost
starving, the poet receiving a guinea
from friend, on which he rushed off to
a baker shop, bought roll, and was
choked while ravenously devouring the
first mouthful Louisa, daughter of
George Ill, when Queen of Denmark,
died in an operation for hernia, at the
early age of twenty-six. Queen Caro-
line, her mother, also died of hernia,
after an operation by the celebrated
Ronby and Caroline, of Brunswick, wife
of George w., fell victim to strangu-
lated umbiblical herna. In regard to
Washington, the weight of authority is
in favor of the view that the cause of his
death was edema of the glottis rather
than Group, as is often stated. Medical
and Surgical Reporter.