In praise of poisonous pharmaceuticals

[Guest guest]

" WC Douglass " <realhealth

Daily Dose - In praise of poisonous pharmaceuticals

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:20:00 -0400

Daily Dose

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October 31, 2005

 

 

 

 

Medicine fit for a (kooky) King

 

You may have heard of the " madness of King George " before. But I'll

bet you didn't know that we may in fact owe our independence to it

(more on this in a minute).

 

Nowadays, this strange-but-true story is somewhat common knowledge.

But for those of you who may not know the basics, here's a summary:

King George III sat on the throne of England during that period in

time in which the British empire was at its absolute mightiest. Under

his reign, Britain defeated Napoleon, commanded the high seas, and

expanded their realm to Rome-rivaling dimensions.

 

Despite all this, George III suffered at least 5 episodes of

long-term, debilitating derangement during his Kingship. Blamed since

1969 on a scarce hereditary blood disease called porphyria, which can

cause temporary profound mental disturbances, the King's madness had

at times before then been thought to have been triggered by the

defining event of his reign - the loss of the American colonies

(interestingly enough, the first bout of his loony-ness struck the

year after we inked our formal Constitution).

 

However, according to a recent Reuters online article, it wasn't the

humiliation of losing control of what would become the greatest nation

on earth or rare porphyria alone that likely caused this mighty

monarch's madness...

 

It was his MEDICINE.

 

Yep, just like with so many of us today, it was the drugs his doctors

prescribed that made him sick. New research involving molecular hair

analysis points to the toxic substance arsenic as the possible cause

of his periodic insanity. As it turns out, arsenic was detected in the

crazy King at approximately 20 times what a " normal " level of this

semi-metallic toxin should be. How did it get there?

 

From an antimony-based medicine of the era given for acute abdominal

pain, which George III suffered from for much of his adult life. The

manufacturing process for this " medicine " pollutes the end product

with large amounts of arsenic. According to a bio-scientist at

England's University of Kent, high doses of arsenic can cause usually

manageable porphyria to exhibit much more severe and debilitating

symptoms than it otherwise might.

 

What's all of this have to do with our independence? Keep reading...

 

 

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Freedom: The upside of deadly drugs?

 

If crazy King George III had been of sound mind, he might not have

been forced to step down from the throne and hand over his power to

his relatively spineless son in 1811, the year before the second war

between the U.S. and Britain broke out (we started it, by the way)...

 

And I can't help but think if he had still been the King he was in his

Norman-storming prime - unaffected by the insanity caused by the

poisonous drugs he was ingesting on order of his doctors (what a

surprise) - he would have been merciless in his attempts to bring his

former colonies to heal. Remember, the loss of the colonies was the

ONLY significant mistake of his otherwise fearsome reign as a

world-conqueror.

 

Yep, you'd think he would have been spoiling for a rematch in that

one, whether or not he was simultaneously warring with Napoleon - also

thought by many to have been killed by arsenic poisoning, ironically.

And I don't want to seen unpatriotic, but I, for one, believe that if

it weren't for the drug-induced madness that prematurely ended his

reign (he lived until 1820), we might well be living under the Union

Jack right now instead of the Stars and Stripes...

 

Not that this would be such a bad thing, given our current state of

affairs. I'll explain exactly what I mean in the next Daily Dose.

 

" Crazy " about history - mad about poison drugs,

 

William Campbell Douglass II, MD

 

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