An enquiry into the circumstances of the death of King Charles the Second, of England / by Norman Chevers.

  • Norman Chevers
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An enquiry into the circumstances of the death of King Charles the Second, of England / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    beginning of gout, so that, for some weeks, he could not walk, as he had been accustomed to do generally, three or four hours a day in the Park. Being in this state, he spent much of his time in his laboratory, engaged in the experi- ment above alluded to. Upon this point, Dr. Wei wood says;— “ There misdit be another natural cause assigned for Kins* Charles’s falling into such a fit as that of which he died, which is this; he had, for some time, an issue in his leg, which ran much and, consequently, must have made a strong revulsion from his head; upon which account, it is probable, it was made. A few weeks before his death, he had let it be dried up, contrary to the advice of his physicians, who told him it would prejudice his health. Their prognos- tic was partly true in this, that there came a painful tumour upon the place where the issue had been, which proved very obstinate, and was not thoroughly healed up when he died.” Lansdown, in his Vindication of General Monk (vol. 2 p. 263), says—“It was always my opinion, and not ill grounded neither, that the king hastened his death by his own quackeries. The last year of his life, he had been much troubled with a sore leg, which he endeavoured to conceal, and trusted too much to his own drugs and medi- cines”—(possibly he employed the Stypticum Begis). “ On a sudden, the running stopped and it was then he was seized with an apoplexy; a common case, fatal the moment those sort of sores dry up.” It appears certain, and this is worthy of remark, that his fatal illness was preceded by other similar attacks—Boger North says that his first attack was at a full levee, when he suddenly fell back in his chair with the exclamation of a dying man. This may have been the “sudden illness” with which it is stated, in Macpherson’s History, he was attacked, when at Windsor, in February 1781.* Dr. Welwood,—who was Physi- cian, for Scotland, to King William the Third, but did not attend King Charles in his last illness,—was told, by an eye- witness, of the circumstance, that, on one occasion, in the heat of the popish plot[l 67 8-79,] a priest, who had been admitted to him on secret business, was seen to hurry from the apartment in the utmost consternation. The king had been “ suddenly surprized with a jit, accompanied with violent convulsions of the body and * I have placed in italics some of the passages in the various narratives which most strongly illustrate the nature of the King’s illness.