Tea at Trianon: Cancer in Medieval Europe

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Cancer in Medieval Europe

From Smithsonian:

“Until now it was thought that the most significant causes of ill health in medieval people were infectious diseases such as dysentery and bubonic plague, along with malnutrition and injuries due to accidents or warfare,” says co-author Jenna Dittmar, also an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, in the statement. “We now have to add cancer as one of the major classes of disease that afflicted medieval people.”

The new findings add to scholars’ understanding of cancer, which has been a problem for humans—and other species—for a very long time. As Ed Cara reports for Gizmodo, the first recorded accounts of cancer date to more than 5,000 years ago, when an ancient Egyptian papyrus described the disease. At the same time, researchers know that cancer is more of a problem today than it was in the past. Today, the authors estimate, 40 to 50 percent of people in Great Britain have cancer in their bodies at time of death. (Read more.)