HEALTH OF THE QUEEN

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27274, 15 February 1954, Page 9

HEALTH OF THE QUEEN

LONDON DOCTOR DENIES REPORTS

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, February 14. The editor of the “Sunday Express,” Mr John Gordon, in his column, “Current Events,” said today he had asked a doctor who had been very closely in touch with the Queen since her childhood what he thought about reports from Australia that she seemed to be wilting at times under the strain of the tour.

This was his reply: “There is nothing the matter with her general health. She is as strong as any young woman of her age could wish to be but how many women could face such an exhausting ordeal without showing the effects of it?”

The doctor said many did not realise the strain put upon the Queen because. the wild adulation of the crowds looked so easy to accept. He said: “There is a medical phrase, ‘summation of stimuli,’ which in plain English means that any stimulus unduly prolonged in time becomes intolerable. This is the basis of the ‘Chinese tortures’—a drop of water on the forehead every minute, and a gong unceasingly beating the same note. “In the Queen's case the many times repeated daily cheers, emotions, and mass hysteria of vast crowds inevitably produce physical and mental exhaustion.

“She realises that to the people the vision of her is ‘the one day of their lives.’ and she went out determined to give of her best. But there is a price to pay for it and only she knows how heavy it is,” the doctor said.