Anyone see the movie "The Madness of King George"? He alternated between bouts of confusion and near-violent outbursts of temper. STRANGE?

Feeblemindedness was a common affliction among European royalty, due to inbreeding. They had a bad habit of intermarriage with their cousins, and the Hanoverian line was particularly susceptible due to being closely aligned with the Habsburgs, well known for mental health issues. Mad King Charles V of Spain, Joanna of Castile and indeed most of the Holy Roman Emperor's line, for example.

King George III was NOT "mad".

Despite popular myth reinforced by a film.

He was not mentally-ill (what Slartibartfast dismisses as "feeble-minded" and "inbred") in any psychiatric sense.

Although his own doctors could not have known what was actually wrong, still less treat him, they left detailed case-notes. Modern doctors have deduced from these that he suffered from a rare physical condition whose effects do include powerful mood swings, but he was not psychologically ill. All his own, 18C, physicians knew were emetics, purges, blood-letting and medicines-by-guess.

However they also prescribed sea-bathing, which did nothing to treat the disease but also did nothing to harm him further!

His prescribed excursion to the seaside away from the grime and smoke of London also put on the must-go-to map the town of Weymouth, or more accurately its neighbour Melcombe, which gained the Regis suffix as a reward and became as it continues, a busy seaside resort.



Where that lesson in British history from a Briton living near the said Melcombe Regis, leaves the United States of America's present President's diagnosis and treatment, I will leave you to decide.... Feeble-mindedness so leeches, Exlax and the R. Potomac, perhaps?