Henry’s obsessions took the form of impulsive and senseless generosity to his supposed friends, and of singing unduly loudly in church. Though he was meek enough, Richard of Gloucester showed him that he could not inherit the earth, and according to some religions Margaret, being a woman, would never have been allowed to show him the way past the golden gate into the kingdom of heaven.
Poor, gentle, virtuous Henry; so well-meaning, yet so overwhelmed by the sense of his sin!
And poor tigerish Margaret of Anjou! If she had had sense enough to “come in out of the wet” we might now be saying “Good Queen Peggy” instead of “Good Queen Bess.” But how can you expect a woman to show common sense and self-restraint when she knows they are attacking her only son? They killed him at last at Tewkesbury almost before her eyes, and thenceforward Margaret became a very tigress and was always intriguing with Louis XI to avenge herself upon the Yorkists.
King Henry VIII
“Never ask me,” said John Hunter, “what I have said or written, but ask me what my present opinions are and I will tell you.”
“Know syphilis in all its manifestations and relations, and all other things clinical shall be added unto you.”—Osler.
It is extraordinary what a popular aversion there seems to be to the idea that this man had syphilis, and that many of his actions were due to his syphilis. To judge by the number of letters that I have received from both England and America one would be inclined to think that he was suffering from measles. This I interpret in two ways: firstly, that people still cling to the idea that syphilis is a “loathsome disease”; secondly, that they do not wish to have their pet ideal of a monster rationally explained in medical terms. As a matter of fact, syphilis is far more than a loathsome disease of skin and bone; it would be quite as reasonable to call it often a very grim disease of brain, mind, soul and body. Since the general use of mercury its skin and bone manifestations have sunk into comparative harmlessness, and since the general use of the arseno-benzol compounds the disease seems to have become still less dangerous to the body; but there is always before us the fact that it may be a very terrible affliction for mind and nervous tissues. But people love to hug their little delusions, and so long as they cling to the idea that it is only a “loathsome disease,” so long will syphilis continue to destroy the flower of the human race—hard-working intellectual middle-aged men who once upon a time were very human youths.
And there seems to be a misconception about its hereditary nature. The child of a syphilitic may be apparently healthy in appearance, though its resistance to other diseases may be low; it would need a blood examination by Wassermann’s test to make sure that its troubles were really syphilitic. It need not necessarily show the classical symptoms of “snuffles,” wasting, and rash. All that may happen is that its whole body resisting power is damaged, and it falls a prey to one or other of the innumerable disease germs that are always ready to attack us.
Furthermore, so virulent is sectarian prejudice that almost every single point about Henry’s life seems still to be in dispute. If anybody could tell me a safe track through the maze of conflicting accounts of the reign of Henry Tudor, between the modern feminists who still cling to the idea that he was an unspeakable monster, the Roman Catholic Church which still paints him as the very devil, Froude who hailed him as the great Protestant hero of the Reformation, and the accounts of the ordinary man who looks upon him as a bloodthirsty spot of grease—I believe Charles Dickens used that elegant description—I should welcome it; but as I have no criterion of truth but what medical experience has shown me to be true of men, women and disease, I can only follow the account of him given by Professor Pollard, who, treating him with studied moderation, was prepared to consider him as the “great Erastrian,” the protagonist of State against Church. No doubt that is substantially true. It is not for a doctor to say.