A fundamental question

• Published in: BMJ Vol. 337; no. dec10 3; p. a2948
• Main Author: Dalrymple, Theodore
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London British Medical Journal Publishing Group 10-12-2008; BMJ Publishing Group LTD; BMJ Publishing Group
• Edition: International edition
• Subjects: Drama; Dramatists; Literary criticism; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); France
• ISSN: 0959-8138; 0959-8146; 1468-5833; 1756-1833
• DOI: 10.1136/bmj.a2948

Anyone who has read of the way, say, that Philip II of Spain, Charles II of England, or Louis XIV were treated by their physicians will realise that a cure being worse than the disease was no mere figure of speech in those days, as no doubt sometimes it is not even in our own; and perhaps Helena saved the king's life not because he was dying from fistula but because he was dying from medical treatment, from whose wilder prescriptions she desisted, replacing them with the ineffectual but harmless cure alls, "of rare and proved effects," bequeathed to her on his deathbed by her father. To proctologists their area of the body is the seat of all happiness, and therefore of all misery, and in Diseases of the Colon and Rectum (1998;41:914-24) the American surgeon Bard C Cosman makes a powerful case for the fistula of the king of France having been anal.