The unroyal odor of king Louis XIV Part 1

Lucky those who have had to face in the early time with physicians. Louis XIV was lucky in this respect, much less. His martyrdom the hands of the court medics lasted long 79 years. It’s distinctive and very annoying smell “the sun king” was obliged it to their doctors…

Why, in fact, Louis smelled so disgusting? His stench was so familiar to his contemporaries, that even the textbooks say about the smell of his Majesty, although the explanation is quite peculiar: in the 17th century was not a habit of washing. The people of the time tried to drown out the lack of hygiene the presence of perfume and powder.

It’s supposedly a logical explanation for the stench, unfortunately, false. Of course, each era has its own smell. Medieval people would probably have fainted, sniffing our chemical preparations for hygiene and cleanliness, which now emanates from any modern human being and that we, by the way, not to notice.

But the fact that Louis XIV stank terribly, even notice his unwashed contemporaries. There is abundant evidence that torture was intimacy with king or worse — sacrament with him.

And if Madame de Montespan, the official mistress of the king and later morganatic wife, for many years of life with him became more pious and more passionately convinced Louis to prefer religion in bodily pleasures, it was obviously quite mundane reasons.

Although kiss of the sun king was like before divine honor, which was eager to receive all the ladies of the court, perhaps with the exception of Liselotte Palatinate, pleasures it was difficult to call. And, who is neither Madame Montespan, knew it better than others.

Thanks to the French historian Louis Betrand who cracked historical mystery special “flavor” of the great Bourbon with scientific seriousness. Professor Betrand did what should I do when unwell. He went to the doctors. And in particular to those who played doctor with Louis XIV.

Such court medics from the king was already three: Dr. Wallon, Dr. duck, and Dr. Faggin. Liselotte of the Palatinate shied away from all three of them like the plague. Indeed, each of them was a doctor as from the book: without any knowledge about human life but filled with ideas about medical class consciousness and medical dogma from the prestigious University of the time — the Paris Sorbonne.

Take, for example, Dr. duck. In his hands, the king was in the heyday of his manhood. In the mind of the doctor, there was a dogma that throughout the human body there is no more threat of infectious boiler than teeth! So duck decides to leave the hotbed of infection in your mouth normal subjects. But the king would have all his teeth to pull out while they are still healthy!

Louis, like to eat very much protested. But Dr. duck was cunning and was often sought out for psychological tricks by which and pushed Louis all their crazy ideas. The doctor assured the king that pulling teeth would be useful for his glory, prestige, and position.

Later the doctor writes in his diary: “His Majesty told me that for the sake of prestige ready for anything, even to die.”

Louis XIV did not die in the hands of pseudo-Dubnica in Versailles. Even though Dr. duck was so “skillful”, when removing the lower teeth broke the king’s jaw, and removing the top pulled out a big part of the sky. And they did so and bequeathed the great Sorbonne: without anesthesia(!).

After a while the lower jaw is fused, only the sky was not to return! Only Dr. duck didn’t even care. A month later he wrote in his diary: “In order to disinfect treated his Majesty the hole in the sky 14 times with a hot iron rod and burned all”.

Now the companions of his Majesty watched the daily show, or rather a drama, as the great Bourbon, when he drinks, poured half a glass of wine back through the nose.

Worse: in an open “cave” of the king, which now was opening his mouth to his nose, clung in such a complicated way whole pieces of food that they were able to remove only a few weeks later through the nose. All this, of course, were accompanied by an amazing stench.

After all, the sun king swallowed tons of food with his toothless mouth without something to chew on. Nothing caused his contemporaries such genuine admiration, as the incredible appetite of the king.

In the 17th century, a good appetite, his Majesty is considered a sign of God’s blessing to the whole Kingdom. Only now Louis was eating, not because heaven was kind to him. He eats too much because from early youth to his death along with him in his body to eat and the most dangerous parasite — a tapeworm or tapeworm, as it is popularly called.

In the presence of this parasite in the body of Louis today there is no doubt because the task of the court medics lies in the fact that on a daily basis to analyze the feces of the king and to write reports on the excrement of his Majesty. All of these records survived to our days.

Poor king to absorb food without having to sicken. For example, for lunch in a huge bowl, he brought ducks, rabbits, pheasants, larks, Guinea fowl, and partridges, which were extinguished 10-12 hours in the same sauce to the loose condition. After all, a toothless king could no longer chew.

In the afternoon the king was suffering from a terrible stomach upset. What do you think is the word most frequently can be found in the medical reports of the life of physicians? Yes, the king farts in all possible ranges. Only on a release of gasses from the intestines wouldn’t stop.