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Psycowlogy

King Nebuchadnezzar was the greatest king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (605BC to 562BC). He is credited with building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world if we ignore the inconvenient fact that The Hanging Gardens are the only wonder of the ancient world that may not even have existed.

Nebuchadnezzar’s love of plants stretched well beyond his admiration of Hanging Gardens. The Book of Daniel describes how the king “was driven from men and did eat grass as oxen”. This reference makes King Nebuchadnezzar the most famous sufferer of boanthropy. Boanthropy is a psychological disorder in which a human believes he or she is a cow or an ox.

Guardian of the Royal Anus

Medical culture organically stratifies itself through titles and specialization. But prestige and professional distinction in medicine have changed over the years. In Ancient Egypt, a physician who had risen to the top of his speciality could be appointed to treat the Pharaoh under the title of neru pehut. This illustrious post is translated as “Herdsman of the Anus”. 

One such doctor, named Irenakhty, was a skilled colonic irrigator tasked with administering enemas up the royal rectum. His predecessor, Khuy, was not merely a “Shepherd of the Royal Anus”. He was also the Pharaoh’s dentist. One can only hope that Khuy scheduled his dental examinations and rectal probes on separate days and that he was an early adopter of fervent handwashing. 

Bicycle Face

If I were to pull a face while our local church bells rang, my great-gran cautioned, my face would remain contorted forever. I never got to ask gran if her mother rode a bicycle.

In the late 19th century, medical journals discouraged women from cycling lest they suffer from a permanent case of “bicycle face”. Some physicians argued that the strained expression of a lady struggling to keep her balance on a bicycle, coupled with the physical exertion involved, could lead to facial disfigurement, exhaustion, insomnia, headaches, and depression.

While doctors have long abandoned warnings of “bicycle face”, cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists now scare the vain with “phone face”. Mobile phones are blamed for sagging jaws, double chins, horizontal neck creases, “Tech Neck”, crow’s feet, “marionette lines”, wrinkled foreheads, exhaustion, insomnia, headaches, and depression.

If my great grandmother were alive today, she would be far more worried about my smartphone than those thundering church bells. And were she to ask: “Why the long face?”, I would be able to blame my phone with the knowledge that the medical community can back me up.

Rugby World Cup 2019

As a lifelong student of the human-animal, the diversity in the three-time World Cup-winning Springbok team from South Africa is awe-inspiring. The tallest player in the team is 2.07 m (6’9 1/2″), the shortest is 160 cm. The lightest is 80 kg (176 lbs), while the heaviest is 123 kg (271 lbs). The fastest player runs 100 metres in 10.59 seconds! One of the players in the team is known to bench press 385 pounds (175 kg) and has to use custom-made 75 kg dumbbells to blast his biceps that measure 19 inches in circumference. The team also speaks four different languages (South Africa has 11 official languages).

A night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.

Before antibiotics, syphilis was an incurable disease. Syphilitic patients were treated with mercury (calomel or mercury chloride), which conveyed toxic side effects.

The imposing threat of infection created a population of hypochondriacs called ‘syphilophobes’. A 1938 paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, featured seven case studies of syphilophobia which prompted Dr Frank Cormia to comment:

“A morbid fear of syphilis has been present in the human race ever since the great plague of the early sixteenth century.”

Adolf Hitler also succumbed to this particular neuroticism. In Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf”, he devoted several pages to syphilis which he called “the Jewish disease.” Several historians have tried to analyse Hitler’s syphilophobia*, and have come up with various explanations.

One controversial theory posits that the Führer may have contracted syphilis from a Jewish prostitute. Another theory suggests he thought that he inherited the disease or acquired it congenitally (Hitler believed that his father was half-Jewish and died of syphilis).

Hitler aside, syphilis was a condition that evoked extreme xenophobia. In Italy, it was called “the French disease”; In France, it was “the Italian disease”. The Dutch called it the “Spanish disease”; the Russians called it “the Polish disease”, and the Turks called it “the Frank disease.”

Given the toxicity of mercury treatment, the medical world needed a magic bullet: A discriminatory drug that would destroy bacterial cells but spare human ones. After testing 606 chemicals, Nobel prize-winning physician, Paul Ehrlich, discovered Salvarsan, a synthetic drug that effectively treated syphilis and sleeping sickness. Salvarsan, or compound 606, was the first magic bullet, the first chemotherapeutic agent!

Salvarsan would eventually be replaced by the modern cure, and preferred magic bullet, for syphilis: penicillin. The serendipitous discoverer of penicillin, Alexander Fleming, built a lucrative practice focused on treating wealthy patients suffering from syphilis. Here’s the kicker: Fleming treated his patients with Salvarsan. The sweet irony is that Fleming, who discovered penicillin, investigated penicillin’s effect on many microbes, but did not think of testing it as a treatment for syphilis!

*More generally, ‘cypridophobia’ is the intense fear of contracting a sexually-transmitted-disease. It is named after the Greek island, Cyprus, which was famous in ancient times as the birthplace of Aphrodite (the Greek equivalent of Venus) and for erotic worship rituals. Cyprian also means lewd woman or prostitute.

The madness of King George

King George III, “the mad king who lost America”, had to be physically restrained in a straitjacket when he became agitated. Historians blamed the King’s affliction on a blood disease called porphyria, but such a fanciful diagnosis was probably concocted to protect the Royal Family from the stigma that surrounded mental illness back then. It is now accepted that King George III had a psychiatric illness, most likely bipolar disorder.

The doctor’s name is Mudd

According to a popular urban myth, the phrase “your name is mud”, or “your name has been dragged through the mud”, originated with the scandalous story of Dr Samuel Mudd.

After assassinating President Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth fractured his left leg (fibula) while fleeing the crime scene. On his escape route, Booth visited Dr Mudd who dutifully reduced Booth’s fracture, set his leg, and provided the fugitive with a splint and crutches. The doctor’s curious delay in reporting the incident to authorities implicated him in a presidential assassination conspiracy. Dr Mudd was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment; narrowly escaping the death penalty by a single vote!

Trouble followed Dr Mudd when an outbreak of yellow fever hit his prison in 1867. Once the prison doctor died in the epidemic, there was no alternative but to let Dr Mudd fill the vacant position. Dr Mudd’s efforts helped stem the spread of yellow fever at Fort Jefferson and saved many lives. The soldiers in the fort signed a petition, public opinion of the doctor softened, and Dr Mudd was granted a presidential pardon in 1869.

Despite those valiant attempts to redeem his good name, the doctor’s name would always remain Mudd. His conviction was never overturned.

Coffee or tea?

Gustav III, King of Sweden, was determined to prove that coffee is unhealthy. He conducted an experiment on two identical twins; both sentenced to life imprisonment. One twin was ordered to drink three pots of coffee every day, while the other had to drink the equivalent amount of tea. The experiment would continue until one of the twins died.

Gustav III did not live long enough to obtain the results of his experiment; He was assassinated in 1792 while it was still in progress. The two physicians who were appointed to supervise his research also both died before the completion of the experiment. Eventually, one twin died at the ripe old age of 83 years. The first twin to die happened to be the tea drinker.

Vikings and Napoleon’s haemorrhoids

“Palmar fibromatosis” used to be known as the “Viking disease” because of its prevalence among people of northern European descent. The gene for it is thought to have been spread during Viking invasions in 12th century Europe. Today, the disfiguring problem is widely known as Dupuytren’s contracture.

Dupuytren’s contracture is named after Guillaume Dupuytren; a skilled French surgeon who first proposed a surgical correction for the condition and then successfully executed it. Dupuytren’s contemporaries described him as the best of surgeons but the worst of men. Operating in a time before reliable anaesthesia, Dupuytren said that the best way to anaesthetize a woman was to make a “brutal remark” and hope she fainted. He was a vulgar man, perhaps hardened by poverty during his student years. It is said that–unable to afford candles–Dupuytren took fat from the cadavers he dissected to burn in his reading lamp.

Despite such humble origins, Dupuytren accrued wealth and fame as the doctor who treated Napoleon Bonaparte’s haemorrhoids. Some scholars think that Dupuytren’s failure to properly deal with the “Little Corporal’s” piles determined the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo.

Napoleon’s haemorrhoids acted up on the day of the battle. Doctors had tried leaches and laudanum but to no avail. There is a theory that Napoleon’s strangulated haemorrhoids prevented him from riding his horse and, according to author Phil Mason, survey the battlefield as was his custom. Delays in launching his assault contributed to Napoleon’s downfall at Waterloo.