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ROBERT BURNS

HIS MEDICAL HISTORY

A most, interesting address on "The Medical History of Robert Burns" was given by Dr. J. A. Doctor at the Wellington' Burns Club concert this week.

For"' many years, said the speaker, there had been disputes about the manner of Burns's death and the mode of liis living. The views presented were nearly right or totally wrong. The rationalisation of medicine in the early nineteenth century cleared up many of the points in dispute.. Difficult as it is for the medical man of the twentieth century to. visualise the state of the profession in the eighteenth century, it must be infinitely more so for the layman. Dr. Doctor then described the state of medicine and treatment for health purposes in the days of Robert Burns, the golden age of the successful practitioner and most audacious quackery. Burns, in his poem, '.'Death and Di\ Hornbrook," satirised the current state of medical ignorance. An oftquoted aphorism of those days was "A doubtful remedy is better than none." - Smallpox was endemic in Scotland. Malaria was almost equally common in the seventeenth and eighteenth. centuries. ■■ ..' .'..-'

The low state of medicine and health conditions in the time of Burns must be taken into account in assessing praise or blame for the treatment of his complaints, physical and mental. The speaker mentioned the medical men who knew Burns, and those i who attended him. One of the foremost, Dr. James Currie, of Liverpool, wrote a much-biased "Life of Btirns," relying on hearsay evidence of very doubtful quality. He had only met the. poet once, yet painted his life in very black colours. Burns met Dr. John McKenzie when the latter was attending his father, who died of consumption. The general testimony of the medical men on Burns was that from youth upwards he suffered from stomach disorders, violent pains in the head, frequently accompanied by i irregular movements of the heart. As mind and body are closely related, Burns's faults, which he deeply deplored, must be judged in the light of his physical condition; anything else would be unjust. The charge made that he died from chronic alcoholic poisoning was refuted by medical testimony that he died of endocarditis, inflammation of the lining membrane of the heart, and that this was due to early rheumatic trouble, dating back to his childhood. In regard to the charge of drunkenness and dissoluteness, it would appear that those who seldom, if ever, met the nost made this affirmation, while men and women who knew him intimately testifiid. very differently. -Lord- Rosebery, in his great speech: on Burns, said. ■ No. sot, as. some might have thought him to be, could have uttered those words, /Don't be afraid, I'll be more respected, a hundred years after I am dead than I am at present.'" "As I mentioned before," said Dr Doctor, "loss of weight, loss of appetite, inability:to get about; are actually more in keeping with the theory of latent tuberculosis than of a rheumatic heart. His prophecy • has become true, and his name is cleared from early, slander. Could a Scottish intellect that had been debased writp "The Cotter's Saturday Night" or that glorious^ song, 'O Wert Thou in thf» Cauld Blast'? It. is unthinkable, and so. I. leave the matter."

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19360718.2.96

Bibliographic details

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 16, 18 July 1936, Page 11

Word Count
546

ROBERT BURNS Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 16, 18 July 1936, Page 11

ROBERT BURNS Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 16, 18 July 1936, Page 11

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