Henry VIII’s Health – Guest Post & Giveaway!

I am delighted to be hosting the first day of Kyra Kramer’s book tour, for her new book Henry VIII’s Health in a Nutshell. Kyra has written a fascinating guest post for us about Henry VIII but before I share it with you, some more good news, I have a copy of Kyra’s new book to give away. Here’s how to enter!

Conditions of Entry

For your chance to win a copy of Henry VIII’s Health in a Nutshell, you must be subscribed to On the Tudor Trail’s newsletter (if you are not already, sign up on our homepage where it says ‘Free Enewsletter Subscription’).

Then simply leave a comment after this post between now and 21 December 2015. Don’t forget to leave your name and a contact email. Please note that I have comment moderation activated and need to ‘approve’ comments before they appear. There is no need to submit your comment twice.

This giveaway is open internationally.

A winner will be randomly selected and contacted by email shortly after the competition closes. Please ensure you’ve added natalie@onthetudortrail.com to your address book to avoid missing my email.

Good luck!

More about the author:

Kyra Cornelius Kramer is a freelance academic with BS degrees in both biology and anthropology from the University of Kentucky, as well as a MA in medical anthropology from Southern Methodist University. She is the author of Blood Will Tell: A Medical Explanation of the Tyranny of Henry VIII, The Jezebel Effect: Why the Slut Shaming of Famous Queens Still Matters, and Henry VIII’s Health in a Nutshell. Her essays on the agency of the Female Gothic heroine and women’s bodies as feminist texts in the works of Jennifer Crusie have been published in peer-reviewed journals . She has also co-authored two works; one with Dr. Laura Vivanco on the way in which the bodies of romance heroes and heroines act as the sites of reinforcement of, and resistance to, enculturated sexualities and gender ideologies, and another with Dr. Catrina Banks Whitley on Henry VIII.

Ms. Kramer lives in Bloomington, IN with her cute geeky husband, three amazing young daughters,  and assorted small yappy dogs garnered from re-homing and rescues. When not working she reads voraciously, plays video games with her family, does cross-stitch, and invents excuses to procrastinate about doing routine house cleaning.

You can read her blog at kyrackramer.com, or follow Kyra Cornelius Kramer on her Facebook page or Twitter.

Syphilis V/S Osteomyelitis

Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger c. 1536

King Henry VIII’s health has always been something of a conundrum for historians and historical enthusiasts. So many people have come up with so many plausible theories about the root causes of Henry’s many ailments that you could write a novella-length book about it just to cover the basics. This, incidentally, is what I did when I wrote Henry VIII’s Health in a Nutshell.

The theories in the book were not created equal. Some were much more likely than others, and some have been soundly refuted yet nonetheless carry on in the lore of Bluff King Hal. All of the theories have to rely on historical documents and modern knowledge of disease, because no one has been allowed to exhume Henry and get a DNA sample, but there are theories that have the majority backing of the medical and academic historical community behind them. Then there are other theories that historians no longer mention because medical science has dismissed them.

One of the theories that has been given the nod by experts is the postulation that Henry had osteomyelitis. As I explain in the book:

“Osteomyelitis is an infection of the bone, often caused by an injury … Some of the symptoms of this kind of infection are bone pain, swelling (which can show up in just a small, tender, inflamed spot or that can puff up a the whole leg into a red, bloated agony-sausage), redness near the affected area, fever, nausea, chills, sweating, and an overall impression that death would be a sweet mercy. Osteomyelitis can last the patient’s whole life if not properly treated. When it is severe, the illness can cause tiny splinters of bone to separate from the femur and start migrating upward through the muscle and skin, creating suppurating ulcers. These sores are putridly smelly and grievously painful.”

Henry certainly had these symptoms in textbook order, and he had plenty of opportunities to sustain the kind of injuries that would have led to osteomyelitis. Henry was an incredibly active man, and he could have easily injured the bones in his legs on one of the historically verified occasions when he fell off his horse while hunting or jousting. Although Henry never broke his legs, a hairline fracture or a puncture on his leg could have created the conditions necessary for the bone to become diseased. It is, of course, not assured that Henry had osteomyelitis, but most doctors and historians think he did because if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is almost surely a duck.

Then there is the disease that Henry didn’t have, but everyone seems to think he did have: syphilis.

“The idea that king had syphilis was first postulated by a Victorian physician in 1888 … The theory was soundly and conclusively debunked in 1931 by Frederik Chamberlin, but that didn’t halt the spread of the salacious slander; the premise that Henry was riddled with syphilis was just too delightfully raunchy to refute … The fact is that neither Henry nor any of his wives ever showed symptoms of syphilis. Henry lived long enough that the tertiary stage of syphilis, which usually appears within 3-10 years of contracting the disease, would have developed. This stage of syphilis is hard to overlook. It results in gaping sores in the lymph node areas, potentially the destruction of the nasal cavity, loss of the front teeth and palate erosion, and granulomatous lesions — especially on the scalp and tibia. It would be extremely unlikely that syphilis would manifest as sores on Henry’s thighs for twenty-plus years, but show no other symptoms. In a court setting wherein Henry was attended at the bath and toilet by courtiers, the physical signs of syphilis would not have been unnoted. More to the point, the physicians of Henry’s time were aware of the nature of the syphilitic symptoms. If they had seen signs of the “Great Pox” on the king, they would have identified his symptoms as such and attempted to treat him accordingly. The most common treatment for syphilis by Tudor physicians involved dosing syphilitic patients with massive quantities of mercury, yet Henry was never given mercury nor any other putative ‘cure’… Additionally, typical manifestations of congenital syphilis include an alterations to the teeth referred to as Hutchinson’s incisors and mulberry molars, as well as rashes and skin infections resembling secondary syphilis occurring within the first few weeks of life. None these ailments or problems were reported in any of Henry’s offspring.

The idea that Henry had syphilis has been dismissed because it didn’t walk like a duck, or quack like a duck, and the odds of duckishness are thus extremely low.

Personally, I think the reason the idea that Henry was syphilitic is still so prevalent is the result of the erroneous cultural assumption that venereal disease and promiscuity always go hand in hand. Popular culture still depicts Henry as a bed-hopping lothario always on the lookout for his next conquest; QED he had syphilis. This is, however, wrong on all counts.

In spite of folklore and fear-mongering, a person does not have to be promiscuous to get a sexually transmitted disease. The sex partner who infects someone can have been that person’s only sex partner. There has been more than one comprehensive global study that shows there is no quid pro quo link between promiscuity and sexually transmitted disease. Thus, even if Henry were the lecher he is portrayed as, it does not mean he would have axiomatically gotten syphilis.

Moreover, Henry was not a libertine by any means. His number of sexual partners is astoundingly low for a medieval king. He may have had as many wives as he had mistresses, and several historians argue that Henry was something of a prude. He certainly didn’t like to broadcast his love affairs, which is why historical evidence regarding his paramours is scanty and requires diligent research to find.

There are lots of other theories covered in Henry VIII’s Health in a Nutshell. Which historical postulation about Henry’s physical (or mental) well-being do you think hold the most water? Leave a comment for a chance to win a free copy of the book!