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Apr 15, 2013 · However, a new research project based at St George's, University of London, has concluded that George III did actually suffer from mental illness after all.
This review is concerned with the nature of the recurrent mental ill health of King George III (1738–1820), reinvestigation of the widely accepted belief that he suffered from acute porphyria, how this unlikely diagnosis was obtained and, in particular, why it has gained so much unwarranted support.
- Timothy Peters
- 10.7861/clinmedicine.11-3-261
- 2011
- Clin Med (Lond). 2011 Jun; 11(3): 261-264.
- Violent Mania
- ‘A Raving Lunatic’
- Confined to Kew Palace
- ‘Wrongheads’
- Harsh Treatments
- Recovery
- Relapse
- Death
- What Was Wrong with King George III?
- The Legacy of A Popular King
George’s second bout of illness in 1788 was far worse than the first. Whereas before George had displayed mild mental distress, this time around he was struck down with full-blown mania. Residing in Windsor Castle at the time, the king’s behaviour quickly spiralled out of control. He became extremely rude to everyone around him, he suffered from ha...
George’s family and staff were mystified. This amiable, polite family man had turned into a raving lunatic. A visitor to Windsorwas astonished to witness George burying a steak in the grounds of the castle, believing it would grow into a beef tree; another saw the king trying to shake hands with an oak tree, believing it to be the King of Prussia. ...
George was moved from his apartments at Windsor to Dutch House in the grounds of the long-since demolished Kew Palace in London. There, his physicians tried and failed to cure him of his insanity with several treatments we would now consider a form of torture. These included applying arsenic-laden powders to the king’s skin to make it burn and blis...
Beside herself with worry, Queen Charlotteturned to Francis Willis. Willis was a provincial physician and clergyman who had come to national attention after successfully treating what were then known as ‘wrongheads’ in his own private asylum in Lincolnshire. Willis believed that the root cause of mental illness was over-excitement. He intended to c...
When George ranted and raved and attacked those attending him, Willis ordered the king’s servants to gag him and place him in a straitjacket. He was left that way, thrashing around and making incomprehensible noises until he tired himself out and calmed down. When the king behaved himself, he was rewarded by being allowed to see members of his fami...
The king slowly began to recover under Willis’s care, though it is debatable whether the physician’s methods contributed to his recovery. By 1789, George was completely back to normal. His recovery was a blessed relief to the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, who feared a regency of George’s son - who favoured Pitt’s rival, Charles James Fo...
Alas, the king’s recovery was not to last. In 1801 and again in 1804 he suffered further relapses and was again confined to Dutch House. He recovered from both relapses, but it was clear that the king’s mental and physical health was deteriorating. The final blow came in 1810. Already almost totally blind due to cataracts, the king suffered a final...
King George III died on the 29th of January 1820 at the age of eighty-one. He had reigned for sixty years and remains to this day the longest-serving male monarch in British history. Only his niece Victoria and his descendant Elizabeth II would go on to reign for longer.
King George III reigned for almost 60 years, the third longest in British history. He was not only a respected and diligent monarch but one immensely popular amongst the general populace, as well as in the political establishment. However, rather unfairly, he’s now mostly remembered as the king who lost America and went mad. Interest in his madness...
Whatever was at the root of George’s madness, he was in his lifetime a very popular king. Far from the mad monarch and tyrant of the American imagination, George was a wise, fair and popular monarch whose support for and promotion of Britain and the arts and sciences during his reign made him amongst the most enlightened and forward-thinking kings ...
Apr 29, 2015 · Recent evidence found when analysing George’s letters have suggested, however, that he suffered from bipolar disorder; the King’s sentences became longer, and language more colourful when he was ‘mad’: a sentence containing 400 words and just eight verbs was not unusual in some of these writings.
Mar 24, 2017 · Their results suggest that the king suffered from “acute mania,” an excitable, hyperactive condition that could resemble the manic phase of what is now known as bipolar disorder.
- Sarah Pruitt
Re-evaluation of George III’s clinical condition by Professor Timothy Peters and specialists at St George’s Hospital, London indicates that the king probably suffered from ‘recurrent bipolar disorder, with at least three episodes of acute mania, chronic mania and possible dementia during the last decade of his life’.
May 17, 2023 · To name just a few of his ailments, King George suffered from abdominal pain and sometimes had seizures, during which his attendants would need to restrain him by sitting on him. His urine was ...
