We continue with part two of the Death of Caroline of Anspach with…
Today’s Ruptured Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
King George II of England’s wife Caroline of Anspach was dying from late complications of an umbilical hernia caused during the birth of her youngest daughter, fourteen years previously, which, out of embarrassment, she had refused to have treated. Even now the royal surgeon was summoned only when her bowels finally ruptured, expelling their contents into the abdominal cavity. Despite these dire circumstances, Caroline displayed the sense of humour for which she was justly famous: the sight of Ranby, her surgeon, bending over her abdomen, his wig set alight by a candle flame, sent the queen into such paroxysms of laughter that she begged him stay his scalpel until she had recovered her composure. For twelve days her agony continued, prompting a cruel couplet from Alexander Pope:
Here lies wrapt in forty thousand towels
The only proof that Caroline had bowels
Culled from: Death: A History Of Man’s Obsessions and Fears
And tomorrow we’ll have the tragicomic conclusion of the Death of Caroline of Anspach.