Tea at Trianon: A Troubled Teen With a Pocket Full of Lithium and Nowhere to Go

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

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

A Troubled Teen With a Pocket Full of Lithium and Nowhere to Go

Every parent should read this. It is good to be aware. From Mad in America:

When I was three weeks old, I was reportedly “particularly fussy” — I cried a lot and could not sleep. I was given phenobarbital drops by my 1970s pediatrician and diagnosed with colic. Despite the fact that my parents were former hippies who insisted on a simple, natural lifestyle free of pesticides or refined sugar, they listened to the doctor and poured the drops down my young throat so we could all get a good night’s rest.

I had a lot of health problems as a child and by 1988 I was in the hospital for an idiopathic pain syndrome that was ultimately diagnosed as neurovascular dystrophy and amplified pain. Until that time, I had been dragged from one doctor to the next and been given countless rounds of antibiotics, had missed a lot of school, and had a specialist for many of my body systems. The treatment plan for my pain syndrome was intense physical therapy, exercise, diet changes, and counseling to learn stress management. During that hospital stay I was referred to a neuropsychologist who ran a battery of psychological tests.

My inpatient neuropsychiatric testing contradicted previous tests I had had in the second grade that placed my IQ at 135 and indicated that I was a gifted, creative, and imaginative young lady with some significant learning disabilities that would likely resolve with an individualized educational plan. Instead, my IQ had plummeted in those few years and, by the time I was 13, I was seemingly no longer gifted. They recommended more counseling, and that ended up being the bridge between body and brain that I almost never crossed again. (Read more.)