Inside the Body of Henry VIII

There was an excellent program on the History Channel this week called Inside the Body of Henry VIII.
It was made last year and presented by historian Robert Hutchinson, medical historian Steve Bacon(see our blog on the Parham House study day23 September 2009)with Dr Lucy Worsley and Dr Catherine Hood.

The program looked at the health of Henry from his childhood up to his death and Henry was a tough character indeed. He was exposed to tuberculosis when young, he contracted smallpox and malaria during his lfe, and had a head injury whilst jousting when younger.
What finally made him give up jousting was the accident that knocked him unconcious for two hours in January 1536, he was 45 years old at the time, what was he doing on a horse in armour at that age? It was from this second head injury that his moods began to change and he became the tyrant and despot that history remembers him by.

The accident was gruesomely recreated by dropping at 1500lb weight from 14 feet in the air onto the carcass of a pig, yuk!
From this accident, the King did not take any more exercise but cointinued to eat as much as 5,000 calories a day and was 28(178Kilos) stone when he died, he also showed all the symptons of late onset type 2 diabetes. Lucy went round a supermarket and gathered up a typical week's food for the king, there was lots of it and plenty of alchohol too.

Robert and Steve dismissed the notion that Henry had Syphilis, there is simply no evidence in the household accounts for the purchase of any mercury which was the only recognised cure for the disease at the time and there were also no medical notes in the physicians reports either of treatment for external sores that characterises the disease.

The CGI graphics of the autopsy on the body were excellent and revealing, all in all a very well researched and presented program and well worth watching.

There was no mention of the Cushings syndrome theory(see our blog again) I must ask Robert about that the next time I see him.


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