Post Mortems: II

MERE MORTALS

Boswell: But of what use will my book be when it is finished?

Johnson: Never mind the use—do it!

History is an Art and should be written with imagination.

Anatole France.

Post Mortems: Two

Mere Mortals

Medico-Historical Essays

By
C. MacLaurin
M.B.C.M., F.R.C.S.E., Hon. Deg. Padua
Lately Lecturer in Clinical Surgery, the
University of Sydney; Late Consulting
Surgeon, Royal Prince Alfred
Hospital, Sydney; Late Honorary
Surgeon, Royal
Hospital for Women,
Sydney

New York
George H. Doran Company

COPYRIGHT, 1925,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

MERE MORTALS
—B—
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

This book is
Affectionately Dedicated
To my Wife
and
To my Daughter
MRS. A. P. MACKERRAS

Preface

Great numbers of people, especially medical men, have written to me asking me to continue the short studies of great men of the past that I began in Post Mortem; and the result is the present volume.

Many reviewers complained that Post Mortem contained too much “medical jargon,” whatever that may mean. There is doubtfully such a thing as medical jargon; it is merely a method of expressing thoughts for which there is no English equivalent except by the method of a cumbrous sentence. For that reason I have tried to translate my thoughts into English whenever it is possible. If by mischance a technical term should have crept in, you will find most medical terms in any decent modern English dictionary; or failing that, they are all simply taken from the Greek. But there is another jargon than medical. There is the filthy jargon which insists on saying “the Red Plague” when we mean syphilis; or “in a certain interesting condition” when we mean to say “pregnant.”

That jargon I absolutely refuse to use. Those elderly people with fixed minds who prefer that sort of thing had better stick to Little Arthur or something equally fictitious. As a doctor writing on very serious subjects I must claim the doctor’s privilege of writing with absolute frankness; without suspicion of coarseness.

And I beg you not to accept as diagnoses what are sheer speculations.

Acknowledgments

The first drafts of these essays appeared in the Australasian Medical Journal, The Sydney Bulletin, the Australian Home, Art in Australia, and the Australian Forum. They have nearly all been considerably modified with the growth of knowledge and frequent rewriting. I have to thank Miss Kibble, of the New South Wales Public Library, for assisting me immensely in hunting up many authorities from whom I quote. Without her help this book could never have been written.

Glossary

Imperative idea: An idea that, however malapropos it may be, keeps mounting into consciousness.

Obsession: An imperative idea that compels appropriate action.

Phobias: Unconscious fears, often acquired in early infancy, which may ruin a man’s whole life for him. There are many different kinds of “phobia” of which syphilophobia is probably the most common.

These three are all signs of:

Psychasthenia: A weird half-sister of neurasthenia, generally the result of heredity, combined with abnormal education in early youth. In the psychasthenic state the patient may be subject to all manner of imperative ideas, obsessions and phobias. Sometimes he stammers, sometimes he is compelled by his “unconscious” to jerk his limbs about in quaint antics; sometimes he is afflicted with awful doubts and scruples.[1]

All the other medical terms are, I think, explained in the text as they arise.

Contents

PAGE
Dr. Johnson[17]
King Henry the Saint[40]
The Tragedy of the Tudors:
(a) KING HENRY VIII[50]
(b) EDWARD VI[76]
(c) MARY TUDOR[86]
(d) QUEEN ELIZABETH[93]
Ivan the Terrible[103]
Luther’s Devil[117]
Henry Fielding[128]
King James I[136]
King Charles I[143]
King Charles II, Catherine of Braganza and Nell Gwynn[148]
Henri Quatre and Marguerite de Valois[163]
Frederick the Great[189]
The Children’s Crusade[209]
Some Epidemics of Social Importance[222]
F. W. Nietzsche[247]
Arthur Schopenhauer[255]
Baruch Spinoza[269]