What Killed Jane Austen?: And Other Medical Mysteries (10 page)

In 1891 he formed an intimate friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas. This infuriated Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, who left an open card at the Albemarle Club, which said: ‘To Oscar Wilde posing as a Somdomite’(sic).

In February 1895 Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel, failed, and in April was arraigned for sodomy. He was tried twice, the first trial being aborted by a hung jury, despite the joyous evidence of blackmailing boys.

At the second trial in May he was found guilty and given two years’ hard labour; a crushing blow for such a sensitive man.

At Pentonville Prison he was declared medically fit, so spent six hours a day on the demoralising treadmill, where he peddled mindlessly for 20 minutes then rested for five minutes, slept on bare boards and for the first three months had no communication with anyone on the outside.

The result was that he lost weight, became withdrawn and depressed, and suffered from insomnia. After some weeks, diarrhoea set in. As the prison lavatories could only be used during the hour of exercise, a tin bowl in his cell was his toilet. He was later to write that warders vomited at the indescribable sight that greeted them in the morning.

The prisoner fainted in chapel, and in the fall injured his ear so badly he spent two months in the infirmary. He was troubled by pain in the ear for the rest of his life.

Wilde was transferred to Reading Gaol. When discharged in May 1897 he was bankrupt, a social pariah and a broken man.

He went to live in France. There a persisted rash developed, possibly a vitamin deficiency—though he put it down to eating mussels—and he went to Rome to be blessed by the Pope. It did not help therapeutically, but of the event Wilde wrote mockingly to a friend: ‘My walking stick shows signs of budding!’

Wilde deteriorated physically, and by September 1900 he had become bedridden. The skin rash was florid and his ear so painful that, according to a surviving bill, his doctor visited 68 times between September and December.

On 10 October, in his beggarly room, his ear was operated on, either to puncture the eardrum to let accumulated fluid escape or for removal of polyps. It was during one of the daily post-operative dressings he made his famous remark: ‘I am dying beyond my means … My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has to go.’

On 29 October the ear developed an abscess. It was then his doctor lent credence to the syphilis story, by recording it as: ‘a tertiary symptom of the infection he contracted when twenty’.

Morphine and chloral hydrate had no effect on the pain. On 27 November he became delirious and meningitis manifested itself. Neither ice packs to the head nor mustard plaster to the feet had any effect, and on 30 November 1900 Oscar Wilde died.

It is incredible to think it is only 100 years or so since a bunkered morality could cause such mental and physical suffering in trying to sanitise the actions and works of this towering genius.

(JL)

Among the side issues of the upheavals in Russia in the fairly recent past was the macabre rumour that the body of Vladimir Il’yich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, was removed from its splendid glass-enclosed sarcophagus in the Kremlin wall and deposited elsewhere. Before he disappears completely from our consciousness, as well as our vision, let’s just take a look at the drawn-out death and ghoulish preservation of the old revolutionary.

Ulyanov was born in 1870, the third of six children, one of whom, his eldest brother, was hanged for conspiracy in 1887. He adopted the pseudonym Lenin in 1901 during his clandestine party work after exile in Siberia. One grandfather was a physician and the other a serf, and he himself was regarded as a very bright student of Greek and Latin. But the fire he felt in his belly could not be fuelled by the classics, only by revolution, so he turned to politics.

His subsequent public life is well recorded; what we want to know are the medical aspects.

During the greater part of his life he was physically strong. This robust nature held him in good stead in August 1918 when, after an assassin fired two bullets into him, he made a speedy recovery, even though both missiles remained in the body. But early in 1922 at the young age of 52 Lenin became seriously ill with headaches, and in April his doctors thought it prudent to remove some of the ironmongery. He recovered, but in May had a stroke which left him partially paralysed and unable to speak. By dint of will power and a sterling constitution, the following month he recovered enough to throw himself into the formation of the nascent USSR.

In December he had another stoke with paralysis, and then on 10 March 1923 yet another cerebral haemorrhage which deprived him of his speech. It never returned, and he was in this hapless and, for him, surely most frustrating state until he died in the city of Gorki on 21 January 1924.

It was then there occurred an exacting post-mortem examination which in the end became a pathological
tour de force
, followed by preservation.

The autopsy was done by one man, Professor A.I. Abrikosov, but he had no less than eight top-flight pathologists and clinicians standing by, ready to purse their lips and suck their teeth at the slightest hint of hesitancy. Not only that, the Minister of Health himself was present, presumably to make sure the rites were enacted in an ideologically sound way. As reported in
Izvestiya
of 25 January 1924, it took three hours ten minutes to complete.

Externally, two old bullet scars were apparent, one in the left arm and the other over the right clavicle where the missile had been removed. The remaining bullet was found in the muscle covering the shoulder joint. The surface of the left hemisphere of the brain was depressed, and when cut open found to be extensively collapsed. Beneath the collapsed area were areas of yellow softening involving both white and grey matter, and cavities containing cloudy fluid. There were marked arteriosclerotic changes in the main arteries at the base of the brain. These arteries were considerably narrowed, as were their tributaries and the carotid arteries (the principal arteries on each side of the neck). In fact the left internal carotid was completely blocked. There was fresh blood in the mid-brain.

There were a few adhesions in the lungs and a healed scar in the left apex (the upper extremity of the lung, behind the first rib). The coronary arteries were narrowed, and fatty deposits were present in the aorta.

The cause of death was put as due to haemorrhage over the corpora quadrigemina area of the brain, and it was stressed that the post-mortem showed that most of the very severe brain damage must have been present for some time before death (a point perhaps lost on later generations).

It was decided to have the body lie in state. To this end it was soaked in the usual solution of formalin, glycerin, potassium iodide, alcohol and zinc chloride to preserve it for a matter of weeks only.

In six weeks some 100,000 people filed past, and there were many requests from outlying areas to hang on until they got there. Signs of deterioration with autolysis (cell and tissue degeneration) and skin desiccation began to set in, yet still the faithful filed reverentially past. It then dawned upon officials that the population of the USSR being what it was, this could go on until something pretty unpleasant was the only thing left. So they decided to embalm the body properly and display it in a specially built mausoleum in Red Square.

It was then that the embalmers received what they surely would consider
the
call of a lifetime, and the anatomy professor at Kharkov University was given the awesome task. Bit by bit every part of the body, including bones, was hydrated, depigmented with acids, peroxides and aldehydes, and then embalmed. Work proceeded day and night for four months, and the body was finally inspected by the appropriate committee on 26 July. It was declared to be sweet and, well, lifelike.

The Soviet Government wisely decided to publish the autopsy data at the time; political mileage might otherwise have been made out of it.

One bit was missing, however—the brain. It was hoped that its study by the renowned German neuropathologist Oskar Vogt would throw light on the alleged genius of its owner. In return for the honour, the Germans undertook to train Soviet scientists in their methods. A special institute was later built in Moscow, from which the Russians operated.

For three years the brain was scrutinised and picked over, until at last Vogt concluded that the pyramidal cells in Layer III of many cerebral areas were unduly numerous and large. At the time this was thought to have a mental association and was in tune with Lenin’s intellect. More work was deemed necessary to compare the brain with those of other deceased intellectual giants, of which it seems they had 13 in stock. In addition, specimens from different ethnic groups were called for, as well as from some animals and children. A special questionnaire on Lenin’s personality was devised, which was to be filled in by those who had known him.

And then, nothing; no articles, no huzzas, no Red Stars. The project was quietly, and probably mercifully, dropped. (After the Second World War the laboratory was found to be in ruins and containers with specimen brains and slides scattered over the floor. Nowhere was there any trace of Lenin’s name.)

Vogt’s study did not throw much more light on the alleged genius of the subject. There is no doubt about Vogt’s diagnosis, but his ideas about the size of cells being of significance or that racial peculiarities affect intelligence were a bit outdated even then.

At least the team of embalmers did a good job. The old chief only needed to be dusted every now and again to maintain his pristine appearance which he held for over 67 years.

Where is Lenin’s body now? Apparently it is still in the mausoleum in its original spot. The mausoleum was closed after the uprising of 1993 and the body disappeared from view for some time, but the building has been reopened on a very restricted timetable while the authorities ponder the sensitive issue of the final resting place of the old leader.

The Moscow Brain Institute, the child of the project, still stands as one of the leading neurological centres of the world. Perhaps they should bury Vladimir Il’yich Ulyanov there.

(JL)

It was [Churchill’s] exhaustion of mind and body that accounts for much that is otherwise inexplicable in the last year of the war—for instance the deterioration in his relations with Roosevelt (Lord Moran)

Can we understand what drove a man as great as Winston Churchill (1874–1965)? Was it his parents’ constant rejection of young Winston that made him strive so hard? At 18, he wrote to his mother: ‘I can never do anything right. I suppose I shall go on being treated as “that boy” until I am 50 years old.’ Or was it his belief that, like his father, he would die at the age of 46? What better goad to overachieve?

These were not his only burdens. Churchill was also unlucky in his choice of ancestors: five of the previous seven Dukes of Marlborough had had severe recurrent depression. Churchill himself called his recurrent moods of depression ‘black dog’.

In 1915, at the time of Churchill’s Dardanelles fiasco, his close friend, Lord Beaverbrook, wrote: ‘What a creature of strange moods he is—always at the top of the wheel of confidence or at the bottom of an intense depression.’ All this is very strong evidence that Churchill had what psychiatrists now call bipolar mood disorder (formerly known as manic-depressive disorder).

Even as a young man, Churchill was a health faddist, self medicator and lover of quack remedies. He used inhalations before speaking in public, and travelled with cylinders of oxygen.

When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Churchill emerged from 10 years of political exile to become First Lord of the Admiralty.

In May 1940, after Germany invaded France, Belgium and Holland, Churchill succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister. He looked like Britain’s only hope. Hitler had made (temporary) peace with Stalin and now controlled Europe; the United States still remained neutral.

But Churchill was now 65, and there were many concerns about his health. So in November 1940, Sir Charles Wilson (later Lord Moran) became Churchill’s personal doctor.

This doctor-patient relationship continued, though not smoothly, until Churchill’s death 25 years later.

In December 1941, at the White House, Churchill got chest pain. He said it was muscular but he was frightened; Moran thought it came from the heart. Luckily, it did not recur.

From early 1943, Churchill had several attacks of pneumonia. After meeting Roosevelt and Stalin at the Teheran Conference, he had pneumonia with heart problems.

Alanbrooke, Chief of the imperial General Staff, complained in March 1944: ‘He seems quite incapable of concentrating for a few minutes on end, and keeps wandering continuously.’

At the Potsdam Conference, Churchill was too tired to read his briefing papers, and had to be carried in a chair.

The Labour landslide of July 1945 unexpectedly dumped the Conservatives. Churchill was depressed for months, but unfortunately stayed on as Leader of the Opposition.

A month later, after a long game of gin rummy, he had weakness of the right hand, but he recovered. Lord Beaverbrook made officials announce that it was ‘a chill’. A Cabinet Office Under-Secretary, Sir George Mallaby, described Churchill at this time as rambling and lacking comprehension.

In October 1951 he narrowly won an election, and returned to Downing Street; he was now 76. Moran wrote: ‘The old capacity for work had gone, and with it much of his self-confidence … Everything had become an effort.’

For his fatigue, Churchill vainly consulted the osteopath Stephen Ward (who later led to the fall of a Conservative Government).

In early 1952, Churchill had a more serious stroke affecting his speech. By now, he insisted on even the most complex issues being condensed into one paragraph before he would consider them. Moreover, the Prime Minister often could not even follow a discussion.