Today’s Courteous Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
If official records of such events are to be taken seriously, royal patients are a lot braver and more courteous than the rest of us. After George IV had a sebaceous cyst removed from his head in 1821, entirely without the aid of any sort of anesthetic, he casually inquired of the surgeon, Astley Cooper, “So, what do you call these tumors?” Queen Victoria had a particularly nasty axillary abscess drained when she was fifty-one years old. When she came round from the chloroform, she is supposed to have opened her eyes and remarked, “A most unpleasant task, Professor Lister, most pleasantly performed.” The price of failure for a royal medic, however, has always been high, as demonstrated by Bohemia’s blind King John. When his surgeons failed to restore his eyesight he had all of them drowned in the Danube.
“A most unpleasant task, most pleasantly performed.” What a splendid sentence! I shall have to remember that the next time I have an unpleasant medical experience.
Culled from: Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty
Morbid Mirth Du Jour!
I thought it was incredibly sweet of a friend to post this on my Facebook page and say, “Maybe someday you’ll be so lucky.” Oh, I’ve no doubt! (Thanks to Anne for sharing this one.)
