WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.195 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.195 --> 00:00:05.820 align:middle line:84% ARTHUR BURNS: Our main focus at the moment in the transcription 00:00:05.820 --> 00:00:09.730 align:middle line:84% project is the medical papers associated with George III. 00:00:09.730 --> 00:00:12.570 align:middle line:84% One of the things we all think we know about George III 00:00:12.570 --> 00:00:16.980 align:middle line:84% is that he was "mad" and that this madness was 00:00:16.980 --> 00:00:20.970 align:middle line:84% one of the key facts affecting his kingship, which 00:00:20.970 --> 00:00:24.960 align:middle line:84% of course, extended a remarkably long time. 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:27.320 align:middle line:84% But actually many of us have not gone much further 00:00:27.320 --> 00:00:31.220 align:middle line:84% behind that general sense that he was a mad king-- 00:00:31.220 --> 00:00:34.310 align:middle line:84% asking in what way precisely was he mad? 00:00:34.310 --> 00:00:37.130 align:middle line:84% How much of his career as monarch was he mad? 00:00:37.130 --> 00:00:40.995 align:middle line:84% And what effects did this have and on whom? 00:00:40.995 --> 00:00:42.620 align:middle line:84% I think many people are quite surprised 00:00:42.620 --> 00:00:45.710 align:middle line:84% to discover that actually for a large part of his career 00:00:45.710 --> 00:00:48.350 align:middle line:84% as monarch, George III was not in any sense suffering 00:00:48.350 --> 00:00:50.010 align:middle line:90% from mental illness. 00:00:50.010 --> 00:00:53.360 align:middle line:84% The most famous bout which occurred in 1788 to 1789, 00:00:53.360 --> 00:00:55.888 align:middle line:84% which became the subject of Alan Bennett's famous play-- 00:00:55.888 --> 00:00:57.680 align:middle line:84% The Madness of George III, which many of us 00:00:57.680 --> 00:01:00.160 align:middle line:84% get our initial knowledge of the subject. 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:02.460 align:middle line:84% In fact, George right about six months, 00:01:02.460 --> 00:01:06.680 align:middle line:84% he also suffered brief recurrences in 1801 and 1804. 00:01:06.680 --> 00:01:10.070 align:middle line:84% And then after 1810, by which time he was very old 00:01:10.070 --> 00:01:12.620 align:middle line:84% and was suffering from other significant illnesses, 00:01:12.620 --> 00:01:16.610 align:middle line:84% he gradually succumbed to a more developing mental disorder 00:01:16.610 --> 00:01:19.700 align:middle line:84% which partly blended mental illness with the effects 00:01:19.700 --> 00:01:22.470 align:middle line:84% of aging, and senility, and dementia 00:01:22.470 --> 00:01:25.373 align:middle line:84% in a rather unfortunate cocktail that made his last years 00:01:25.373 --> 00:01:26.290 align:middle line:90% something of a misery. 00:01:26.290 --> 00:01:28.370 align:middle line:84% So that final decade of his life, 00:01:28.370 --> 00:01:30.267 align:middle line:84% he was significantly affected by it. 00:01:30.267 --> 00:01:33.140 align:middle line:84% That's of course why we had a regency in the Prince Regent 00:01:33.140 --> 00:01:34.405 align:middle line:90% at that time. 00:01:34.405 --> 00:01:36.030 align:middle line:84% More generally, the rest of his career, 00:01:36.030 --> 00:01:38.790 align:middle line:84% it was episodic and quite short lived 00:01:38.790 --> 00:01:41.570 align:middle line:84% periods, in which he was most clearly suffering 00:01:41.570 --> 00:01:43.705 align:middle line:90% the effects of mental illness. 00:01:43.705 --> 00:01:45.080 align:middle line:84% And what was that mental illness? 00:01:45.080 --> 00:01:47.420 align:middle line:84% Well, at the moment, there's some division 00:01:47.420 --> 00:01:49.010 align:middle line:90% among scholars on that. 00:01:49.010 --> 00:01:51.610 align:middle line:84% Prevalent theory for much the last 25 years 00:01:51.610 --> 00:01:55.640 align:middle line:84% has been that George suffered from porphyria, which 00:01:55.640 --> 00:01:59.390 align:middle line:84% was a physical disorder which had mental effects, 00:01:59.390 --> 00:02:02.450 align:middle line:84% and which was particularly associated 00:02:02.450 --> 00:02:05.270 align:middle line:84% with the psychiatrists Ida Macalphine and Richard 00:02:05.270 --> 00:02:08.630 align:middle line:84% Hunter who put forward this theory in a very important book 00:02:08.630 --> 00:02:12.740 align:middle line:84% written in the 1960s called George III and the Mad-business 00:02:12.740 --> 00:02:14.385 align:middle line:84% The main competing explanations-- 00:02:14.385 --> 00:02:18.230 align:middle line:84% he was for suffering from a mania, some form of bipolar 00:02:18.230 --> 00:02:20.765 align:middle line:84% disorder, which Timothy Peters has 00:02:20.765 --> 00:02:24.520 align:middle line:84% recent been advocating in his recent writings on this topic. 00:02:24.520 --> 00:02:27.030 align:middle line:84% And I don't think we're going to solve that issue ourselves 00:02:27.030 --> 00:02:28.850 align:middle line:84% through working on the Georgian Papers. 00:02:28.850 --> 00:02:30.950 align:middle line:84% But we, in fact, can begin to address 00:02:30.950 --> 00:02:33.400 align:middle line:84% other aspects of George's illness, which perhaps have 00:02:33.400 --> 00:02:35.450 align:middle line:84% been rather neglected because of the focus 00:02:35.450 --> 00:02:39.820 align:middle line:84% on the question of what it was he was actually suffering from. 00:02:39.820 --> 00:02:43.000 align:middle line:90%