Now in paperback, an examination of the ways in which the mental sickness of individual rulers has affected history, from the Roman emperors through to the present day. Originally published in 1993.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing,
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This review is from: The Madness of Kings: Personal Trauma the Fate of the Nations (History) (Hardcover)
When I purchased The Madness of Kings by Green, I had hoped for an in-depth look at the symptoms of the apparent mental illness of certain royal persons from centuries past, highlighted in this book.What I was looking for were theories for diagnoses, using contempory knowledge, from the symptoms listed in historical diaries and writings from the timeperiods. Instead, I was disappointed, because it just seemed to me as though the author was saying "this one was schitzophrenic and that one was schitzophrenic, or maybe he or she was manic depressive, but no one really knows." Oh please. If one is going to write a book on such a fascinating subject, one should delve in whole heartedly and not be so irritatingly wishy-washy and noncommittal. It seemed that Green gave the same "surface" diagnosis for each individual highlighted. Modern science points to many organic reasons why the brain is capable of malfunctioning. I would like to have seen this area explored, and better explanations given. Of course one does not expect any diagnosis to be perfect, being as it would be relying on historical documents and not on any examination of a live patient. However, some of the symptoms mentioned are screaming organic origins. The internet Wikipedia mentions just a few physical illnesses that mimic mental illness: Quote...."If the aetiology or physiology of a mental illness is discovered, it has to be reclassified. When the physiology of Parkinson's disease was discovered - that it was caused by progressive damage to the substantive nigra in the dopaminergic system - it became redefined as a degenerative neurological disease. Likewise many people were initially diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1920s until it was discovered that their condition was the result of a virus, encephalitis lethargica."....Unquote. A much better book which deals with the subject of mental illness of past royalty is Purple Secret by Rohl, Warren, and Hunt. In Purple Secret, the authors explore the fascinating possiblity that many of the kings and queens from past centuries may have suffered from an inherited dysfunctional gene which causes porphyria. Certainly the symptoms seem to fit the diagnosis. Furthermore, in centuries past, when first cousins married, it makes sense to believe that in-breeding merely perpetuated such dysfunctional genes. All in all, I feel that The Madness of Kings took the easy way out and simply wrote the most obvious, and never took the time to analyze individual symptoms. Instead, it is a book that never gets underneath the surface, never takes any risks, and as a result, is dull and uninformative.
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