"MERE MORTALS"

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12283, 31 October 1925, Page 12

"MERE MORTALS"

Why was Dr. Johnson gloomy, and Frederick the Great “peculiar?” Why is Mary Tudor known in history as, “Bloody Mary,” and Ivan of Russia as “the Terrible?” Why was James I. “the wisest fool in Christendom,” and why was Schopenhauer a misogynist? The standard histories in the English language pay hut slight attention to the physical state which may have influenced historical personages throughout their lives. Occasionally we are told —when the fact is self-evident—that advancing years were causing a king or a statesman to lose his grip on the. affairs of his country, or that a sudden illness prevented his attendance at a momentous council. Yet it is possible that the future historian will study not only the actions of the leading figures of his period, hut will ascertain first of all the data bearing on tfieir physical health. Many of those who read “Post Mortem,” the medico-historical essays of Dr. MacLaurin, will say that no historian worth the name can afford to ignore the pathological state of his characters. Dr. MacLaurin was lecturer in clinical snrgery in the University of Sydney. He died this year, and a second volume of his essays has been published posthumously, under the title “Mere Mortals.” Johnson, according to Dr. MacLaurin, was gloomy because he was a psychastenic. (“Pyschastenia: A weird half-sister of neurasthenia, generally the result of heredity, combined with abnormal education in eatly youth.”) Frederick’s health suffered from his gluttonous and dirty .habits; Mary Tudor was an hereditary victim of the “tragedy of the Tudors” ; Ivan the Terrible was a criminal lunatic, probably through syphilis; James wa3 “a walking pathological museum.” and his life was “one long pain” ; and Schopenhauer —“in hating women he was really hating himself, because he could not resist them.” Writing in an easy, almost conversational style, Dr. MacLaurin tells us of these men and women, and of many others, famous or infamous in history. His exposition is clear, confident, and convincing, so convincing, indeed, that one has the perverse thought that there must he “something wrong somewhere.” The author nimself begs liis readers” not to accept as diagnoses what are sheer speculations.” Yet, if liis speculations hit the mark, and history were to be rewritten in their light, what a strange history it would 1*?, and how much more interesting! ’ (The Bodley Head. Our- copy from Whitcombe and Tombs.)