Did James the First of England die from the effects of poison, or from natural causes? / by Norman Chevers.

  • Chevers, Norman, 1818-1886.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Did James the First of England die from the effects of poison, or from natural causes? / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    20/68 (page 18)
    melancholy; and the corruption thereof supposed the cause of his death.” There is, according to Sir H. Ellis, in the Harleian Manu- script 383, the copy of a letter from a Mr. William Neve to Sir Thomas Hollande, concerning the embalment and bringing to town of the body of King James; the writer says, “The King’s body was, about the 29th of March, disbowelled, and his heart was found to be great but soft, his liver freshe as a young man’s, one of his kidneys very good, but the other shrunke so little as they could hardly find it, wherein there was two stones. His lites and gall, blacke ; judged to pro- ceed of melancholy. The semyture of his head so stronge as they could hardly breake it open with a chesill and a sawe ; and soe full of braynes as they could not, upon the openinge, keepe them from spilling; a great marke of his infinite judgment.”* Beneath an original print, of the King’s death, by Hollar described in the Mirror of Literature, (which we shall, pre- sently, have to notice further) it is mentioned, among other explanatory details, that—“ The physicians who opened him reported his intestines to have been very much discoloured, # Sir Simonds D’Ewes, evidently, followed Mr. Neve’s authority. He says, “ Being embowelled, his heart was found to be very great, which argued him to be very considerate, so extraordinary fearful, which hinder- ed him from attempting any great actions. His liver was as fresh as if he had been a young man, one of his kidneys sound, the other shrunk and two little stones found in it; his lights and gall almost black, which pro- ceeded, doubtless, from excessive care and melancholy” [a rather absurd misreading of the word “ melancholy”—very natural in a non-professional person.] “ The semitures of his skull were so strong and firm as they could scarcely be broken open with a saw or chisel; and the pia mater so full of brains, as they could scarcely be kept from spilling. His bowels wore speedily buried in a leaden vessel, and the body the same day remov- ed to London.” D’Ewes’s notion about the King’s heart was quite in accordance with the pseudo-philosophical folk-lore of that day. We are told, in Thomas Lupton’s “ A Thousand Notable Things,” that,— “ The quieter beasts have the lesser gals; thefearftiller, the greater hearts ; the lighter, the more leaping, the more liver’1; the merrier, the more pleasant, the greater spleene; and the greater voice, the more lights; much like to these verses following:— Cor ardet, fulmo loquitur, fel commovet iras. Splen ridere facit, cogit amare jecur. That is,— “ The heart doth burn, the lungs do speak, The gall to ire doth move; The spleen or milt doth make us laugh, The liver makes us love.”