View Full Version : afflictions of the rich and/or famous
Hitler suffered from Parkinson's disease which worsened after the attempt to blow him up in his bunker.
Churchill was cursed with clinical grade depression.
The painter Manet had a virulent syphilis infection which killed him.
Edward VII, George V and George VI all died of lung cancer likely caused by smoking.
Van Gogh might have had epilepsy.
Robert the Bruce had leprosy.
King Tut might have succumbed to brain surgery
Thomas Carlyle was chronically constipated.
George Bernard Shaw fell out of a tree (he was in his nineties)
Abraham Lincoln may hafe had acromegaly
And I'm not feeling so well myself....
riggerboy
10-Apr-10, 15:59
and heres e moanin about having gout,
John Little
10-Apr-10, 16:51
"Hitler suffered from Parkinson's disease which worsened after the attempt to blow him up in his bunker."
Debatable. It's one theory.
John Toland's notion is more amusing - in fact one might say it's a gas!
John, please elaborate re Hitler. The whole ORG is waitiing!
John Little
10-Apr-10, 17:25
What - Toland's idea about Hitler's farting?
Well here's a link which explains it pretty well.
But Toland went further- he thought that the minute amounts of strychnine Morell was feeding Hitler were causing the shakes. Maybe it was the poison (which is cumulative) or maybe the Parkinsons but if Toland is right then Hitler's flatulence has a lot to answer for.
I don't know if Toland's book 'Adolf Hitler' is online but it is a very thick paperback indeed.
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/node/399
riggerboy
10-Apr-10, 17:37
What - Toland's idea about Hitler's farting?
Well here's a link which explains it pretty well.
But Toland went further- he thought that the minute amounts of strychnine Morell was feeding Hitler were causing the shakes. Maybe it was the poison (which is cumulative) or maybe the Parkinsons but if Toland is right then Hitler's flatulence has a lot to answer for.
I don't know if Toland's book 'Adolf Hitler' is online but it is a very thick paperback indeed.
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/node/399
i think that theory stinks
I recently struggled through Kershaw's double volume. Cant remember the gas attacks but Kershaw has a tendency to switch away from the intimate details of Hitler's life so he can deal with broader societal issues. And of course the uiltimate cause of death was suicide.
The Parkinson's is well attested to and arent there pix somewhere of him grabbing his left arm to control the tremor?
What do you thiink about the rest of the list? Lincoln is interesting!
Trouble in diagnosing the famous is that they tend tend to have symptoms galore as the historical/medical community generates so much research. Van Gogh fits that
And I have just remembered a possible PSYCHOPATH - the painter Richard Dadd who murdered his father.
John Little
10-Apr-10, 18:10
Aye Kershaw does that, though his weak dictator/strong dictator ideas made my ideas on how the Nazi state worked a lot clearer.
Interesting list though.
Lincoln may have had acromegaly or Marfans but I doot they'll dig him up to find out.
WS Gilbert died shortly after rescuing a young lady from a pond.
William lll broke his neck when his horse tripped over a mole hill in Hyde Park so that Jacobites used to toast 'To the little gentleman in the black velver jacket'.
Henry ll - lampreys of course
Edward ll- red hot poker up the rear end
Frederick Barbarossa, held down by the weight of his armour drowned after falling into 18" of water in a river
Marat stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday.
Henry Vii covered from head to foot in eczema
Probably more tucked in my head but I have to go out and prance round a stage.
ciao for now
northener
10-Apr-10, 18:14
Field Marshal Edwin Parrett-Tyburn drowned after becoming convinced he was actually a giant haddock called 'Maurice'.
He disappeared after attempting to swim to Ireland from Great Yarmouth.
Today he would just join the ORG
On the subject of Marat. His body was eventually flung into the Seine when the Jacobins fell from power.
All that was left of him was the famous painting by David, a degree from St. Andrews University and the bath-tub.
The bath tub is hanging up in the Paris waxworks museum. I visited it a few weeks before the bicentenary celebrations.
The I wrote a piece on it for the Medical Post (Marat was an opthalmologist) Some witty editor came up with the headline LAST BATH NIGHT FOR DR MARAT.
The assassination of course took place in the daytime.
But that's the media for you! (Canuck has heard this story many times from me! I am sinking into myh anectdotage...)
Hitler suffered from Parkinson's disease which worsened after the attempt to blow him up in his bunker.
Churchill was cursed with clinical grade depression.
The painter Manet had a virulent syphilis infection which killed him.
Edward VII, George V and George VI all died of lung cancer likely caused by smoking.
Van Gogh might have had epilepsy.
Robert the Bruce had leprosy.
King Tut might have succumbed to brain surgery
Thomas Carlyle was chronically constipated.
George Bernard Shaw fell out of a tree (he was in his nineties)
Abraham Lincoln may hafe had acromegaly
And I'm not feeling so well myself....
Oh Good Lord!
where did you find all of this?
the world as we know it is fallimg to bits..........
Commodre, I am going to reveal a great trick of the freelance writer looking for serious historical items for upscale Sunday newspapers.
Go to the library, biography section.
Pick the person you are interested in (no, not the wee blonde with the computer).
Pick out a biography or two
.
Read the last page!
It doesn't always work but most of the time it does.
Don't tell anybody!
Dog-eared
10-Apr-10, 21:09
How did a 95 year old George Bernard Shaw fall out of a tree ? :eek:
Re GBS in the tree.
He was attempting to prune it!
John Little
10-Apr-10, 23:58
I like the end of Secretary of Defense Forrestal whom USS Forrestal is named after. He was vehemently anti communist but I think it was in 1948 he fell ill of some form of mental disease. He was in a small hotel somewhere- I think in Texas and ran down the road shooting a gun in the air shouting 'The Russians are coming- The Russians are coming'
His aides managed to disarm him and locked him in a room but he managed to hang himself from a radiator using his braces...
Duke of Clarence - drowned upside down in a butt of Malmsey
And I have been trying all night to think of that English bishop whom the Scots skinned and roasted in a sheet of lead - but I can't....
I believe it was Cressingham. The Scots - always a religious-minded people - had him skinned and the skin was used to cover a bible.
Aaldtimer
11-Apr-10, 04:31
As I remember, he was flayed, and his skin made into a sword belt for Wallace.
I doubt whether they would have desecrated the Good Book with the skin of that most hated of English agents.[disgust]
John Little
11-Apr-10, 08:24
My teacher Miss Monro said that they tanned his skin and wrote a message on it in his blood telling King Edward what to do with himself.
Anyway Edward wisnae English- he was a Norman who spoke Norman French.
My teacher Miss Monro said that they tanned his skin and wrote a message on it in his blood telling King Edward what to do with himself.
Anyway Edward wisnae English- he was a Norman who spoke Norman French.
I wonder if it is still possible to teach history like that today in the school system!
I suspect not.
Pity....
The Angel Of Death
11-Apr-10, 15:27
Edward ll- red hot poker up the rear end
Ouch bet that must have nipper a little bit
How did a 95 year old George Bernard Shaw fall out of a tree ? :eek:
Not holding on tight enough ;)
John Little
11-Apr-10, 18:00
"I wonder if it is still possible to teach history like that today in the school system!
I suspect not.
Pity...."
Why should you think it is not taught?
Aaldtimer
11-Apr-10, 19:52
Anyway Edward wisnae English- he was a Norman who spoke Norman French.
Cressingham was the Treasurer of the English Administration in Scotland, according to WIKI.
Edward was the King of England, whatever his nationality, he wanted to be King of Scotland too.:confused
northener
11-Apr-10, 20:16
Oh Good Lord!
where did you find all of this?
the world as we know it is fallimg to bits..........
So are most of the people on that list.....
John Little
11-Apr-10, 20:51
"Edward was the King of England, whatever his nationality, he wanted to be King of Scotland too"
Aye that is true but just remember he was not really English - a bunch of Normans had conquered the English, made the English language into dirty words used by scum whom they looked down on, and robbed them of everything. But 1086 the English owened 8% of England - the Normans had the rest and it largely stayed like that until the 15th century.
Even Bruce was a Norman really !!
Even Bruce was a Norman really !!
Eh? I can't keep up with this!
And I have just remembered a possible PSYCHOPATH - the painter Richard Dadd who murdered his father.
I've never heard of him but would imagine the newspaper headline to be along the lines of: DADD'S DAD DEAD BY DIRTY DEAD. :D
John Little
11-Apr-10, 22:02
Ducati-
Robert I (11 July 1274 – 7 June 1329) usually known in modern English as Robert the Bruce (Medieval Gaelic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Irish_language): Roibert a Briuis; modern Scottish Gaelic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic): Raibeart Bruis; Norman French (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_language): Robert de Brus or Robert de Bruys) was King of Scots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Scots) from 1306 until his death in 1329.
His paternal ancestors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_I_of_Scotland#Ancestry) were of Scoto-Norman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoto-Norman) heritage (originating in Brieux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brieux), Normandy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy))
What I'm saying is that it was not, strictly speaking, the English who tried to conquer the Scots in the times of Wallace and Bruce..
Wallace was a Norman too- not a blue faced gallowglass.
It was the conquered English under their Norman barons, who were trying to assert their authority over the Norman barons who had conquered southern Scotland.
The Normans never got the highlands
The Frasers were Norman, I believe. As were the Sinclairs and the Cheyneys in caithness.
I dont believe history is adequately taught anywhere these days at a school level.
In Canada it has been reduced to a mush of platitudes emphasising how fortunate we all are to live in a multi-cultural country.
Not too different in the UK I wouldn't think.
Ducati-
Robert I (11 July 1274 – 7 June 1329) usually known in modern English as Robert the Bruce (Medieval Gaelic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Irish_language): Roibert a Briuis; modern Scottish Gaelic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic): Raibeart Bruis; Norman French (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_language): Robert de Brus or Robert de Bruys) was King of Scots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Scots) from 1306 until his death in 1329.
His paternal ancestors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_I_of_Scotland#Ancestry) were of Scoto-Norman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoto-Norman) heritage (originating in Brieux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brieux), Normandy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy))
What I'm saying is that it was not, strictly speaking, the English who tried to conquer the Scots in the times of Wallace and Bruce..
Wallace was a Norman too- not a blue faced gallowglass.
It was the conquered English under their Norman barons, who were trying to assert their authority over the Norman barons who had conquered southern Scotland.
The Normans never got the highlands
OK up to speed now :lol:
were the Normans not Orkadian vikings who developed a sort of master plan for colonization?
There was a huge guy called Rolf the Ganger who was too huge to sit on a horse so he walked (ganged) at the head of this viking army which laid seige to Paris in the 11th century. Most of them succumbed to typhus I believe. But not before putting down roots in Normandy. He was the conqueror's great grand-dad I believe but born on the wrong side of the blanket hence he was called William the . (But not to his face!)
There was this Orkney earl who founded Dublin. Part of medieval Dublin was called Osterman town. well into the 18th century (It'[s late at night I cant remember and cant be bothered finding sources so this is unreliable but near enough. The Irish being a nation of ingrates attacked the Vikings and flung their leader into a pit full of snakes. (But there are no snakes in Ireland, St. Patrick expelled them. So we'd better not give too much credit to Hibernian sources and we should stick to the Sagas.
Well, your man in Dubllin flung into the snake pit - they gave him a sword too and he sung his death chant while lobbing off snake heads- had bad news for the Irish. He had three sons all of whom were far more violent and untrustworthy then even he was.
The most violent and sadistic - I think Kirk Douglas played him in a movie - rejoiced in the name Ivar the Boneless! Anyway there was major rampage under way for a hundred years or more and once the harvest was in every year the Vikings would take down their sails from the roof beams of Kirkwall Cathedral, sharpen their axes and go pirating.
Finally Brian Boru the Irish King got rid of the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf although he fell in the battle.
There's a Caithness connection to all this because Caithness at this time was scandinavian and there was this terrible vision seen in the county of these valkyrie women spinning material for shrouds with skulls used as bobbin reels. (I hope I got that bit about the reels right!)
Finally - as I down the last of my trusty Laphroaig- I should tell you that some historians see the Vikings as early exponents of the Scandinavian socialist model of cradle to grave welfare statism. Well it was a short step from the grave in those days but I don't believe a word of it.
(Downs another Scotch and wonders was the snake pit perhaps in Wales....)
John Little
12-Apr-10, 13:01
"Well, your man in Dubllin flung into the snake pit -"
From Dublin he was but the snake pit was in Northumbria and he was flung in on the orders of Aelle of Northumbria.
They were a pretty nasty lot the vikings- they conquered Mercia too and the fate of the Mercian army has been speculated on quite a lot. A mass grave was found a few years ago near Tamworth and the skulls all had little slots in them - probably done after their beheading....
But Alfred saved the English at Ethandun.
They don't teach im any more - and what a shame because no Alfred, not Aengle-land.
I woke up this morning and thought "Mercia."
A nasty little failed state.
Back to the afflicted famous - given the 19th century's predilecion for keeping locks of hair from their loved ones surely there is some of Lincoln's hair that is accessible. So he wouldn't have to be dug up - a DNA analysis could be done.(I am presuming there is a genetic screen for acromegaly...)
John Little
12-Apr-10, 17:39
"A nasty little failed state..." or a centre of culture for years?
At least their king got away and spent the rest of his life in Rome - he did not suffer the fate of Edmund of East Anglia who suffered the 'blood eagle'
There's probably some hair somewhere which could be used.
John Little
12-Apr-10, 21:42
Death of William the Conqueror.
He was grown old and fat and used to spend much of his time counting his money which he loved above all.
At the age of 60 he had lost nothing of his temper and when he heard that a small town in Normandy had revolted against him he left England and took his army to punish the offenders. His orders were to make an example and spare nobody so shortly he spurred his horse into the burning town and an ember flew in front of his horse's nostrils.
The horse reared and threw fat William to the floor where he landed and 'split open his stomach'
He died three days later in great pain begging God to forgive him for all the evil he had done.
Great men needed coffins tho' commoners were buried in sacks. His men scoured the neighbourhood and found the needed stone coffin but William was over 6' tall and the coffin was 5' 6". So they brake both his legs and jammed him in. only to find that his stomach protruded above the top. So they jammed the stone lid on top and tied it down with a leather strap.
It was high summer and the funeral service was long. Part way into the service there was a massive farting sound and the coffin lid blew off. Such a stench filled the air that all men had to leave and it was two hours before anyone ventured back. They closed the coffin with 3 straps and slid it into a niche in the wall of the church and bricked him in.....
shall I continue?
Tubthumper
12-Apr-10, 21:52
Since this has moved to 'horrible deaths of the privileged' wasn't there an affair in Halkirk where some harmless chaps got legless to celebrate Basting the Bishop?
John Little
12-Apr-10, 21:55
"Basting the Bishop":eek:
Is that as rude up there as it is down here?
Tubthumper
12-Apr-10, 21:57
Up where??:eek:
John Little
12-Apr-10, 21:57
In Caithness
Tubthumper
12-Apr-10, 22:02
Oh. I've been having a think, maybe I misheard the story. It was something to do with locking the Bishop in his house and setting fire to him. Bad sermon apparently.
Anyway the local king type chap got a bit miffed and had all the Halkirk chaps lined up, lopped off their hands and feet and said he'd let them off if they could run through the village playing the trumpet.
And that's why people in Halkirk are the way they are today. Apparently
John Little
12-Apr-10, 22:03
Thank Gawd fer that!:eek:
"Basting the Bishop":eek:
Is that as rude up there as it is down here?
You must be thinking of bashing the bishop, another popular Halkirk pastime to this day apparently.;)
George Brims
12-Apr-10, 23:51
Oh. I've been having a think, maybe I misheard the story. It was something to do with locking the Bishop in his house and setting fire to him. Bad sermon apparently.
Anyway the local king type chap got a bit miffed and had all the Halkirk chaps lined up, lopped off their hands and feet and said he'd let them off if they could run through the village playing the trumpet.
And that's why people in Halkirk are the way they are today. Apparently
Oh now you've taken on an impossible task: attempting to explain Halkirk!
Four years ago, we had a thread going called 'Thurso History', and below is something I posted back then, which mentions that it was Bishop Adam who was burned to death by the Halkirk men in 1222.
"Here's some more information on the Thurso gallows, this time gleaned from my "Old Thurso - Caithness Notebook No.4", authored by Donald Grant in the mid 1960s:
During the period of the Norse occupation, the gallows were usually erected within easy reach of the meeting place of the "ting" or "thing", the local law-court, so that justice could be done without delay and seen to be done. In this area the court met on Scrabster Hill where the remains of a broch retain the name Thing's Wa or "law-court field". Less than a mile away, on the slope to the south-west of Pennyland Farm, the gallows stood on the Gallahill. The story goes that many of the Halkirk men implicated in the murder and burning of Bishop Adam in 1222 were hanged here by King Alexander II."
There's also something about it here. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_of_Melrose)
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