King Saul’s mysterious malady

Porphyria—a Royal Malady*

FARMFR GEORGE was a mad king, and so we lost the American colonies: such in brief is the recollection of what the man-in-the-street garnered at school. It is remarkable that so little attention has been paid to the nature of George III's malady, and it is a sad reflection on British medical historians that during the 200 years that have elapsed since his first overt attack of illness, there hav...

Gout: the patrician malady

Aborigines, the repercussions of European contact for levels of native infection and the racial discrimination inherent in the coercive regulations adopted to isolate Aboriginal victims of the disease. More contemporary concerns over the prevalence of HIV/AIDs in the Aboriginal people provides a preamble to a general consideration of the social and governmental responses to the "modern plague" ...

Porphyria - a Royal Malady

Barbiturate automatism--myth or malady?

Patients admitted to the Regional Poisoning Treatment Centre at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, were assessed to identify cases of drug automatism and those who denied the act of selfpoisoning. Only two out of 994 instances of poisoning could be attributed to barbiturate automatism. The case histories of these patients are reported. Twenty-nine patients on thirty-one admissions denied the act o...

Mysterious Marriage