ARTHUR BURNS: If you become involved in transcribing these,
I think the nature of these reports
makes them a particularly satisfying and intriguing
source to explore, as well as very moving as you work
your way through tracing the King's bouts of illness
on a daily basis, with notes written by people who did not
know what the outcome was going to be,
and who quite frequently disagreed with each other
about what the best treatment to approach or understanding
of what was happening was.
At times these voices include not just the doctors--
and there were up to four or five doctors
at various points in attendance on the King treating him--
but those of his daughters and wife commenting to the doctors
on their own experiences.
So if you transcribe these papers,
what can you expect to find?
Well, the first thing to say is luckily,
unlike modern doctors, most of these doctors
have very clear handwriting.
So they don't present many immediate challenges just
in terms of decoding what is on the page.
The one exception to that I think that, for me at least,
is the series of prescriptions and notes
about medicines administered offered in Latin.
These are fairly rare but can be rather difficult to work out
what is being discussed, although some of them
become familiar as you go along.
Laudanum is perhaps the easiest.
Tartar emetic and various others occur frequently as well.
The second thing you get that can be tricky, I think,
is a series of abbreviations that are used.
But one feature of these records, not surprisingly,
given that they've often been written
on a daily basis by the same people, or more than daily,
is they have a certain formulaic quality to them
in which certain material is bound
to crop up in most letters.
So you get the comments on sleep,
you get the comments on medication,
you get the comments on behavior and the state
of mind of the monarch in almost all of them.
And this makes it a bit easier to read
because you get a fairly good idea of what's
coming in each part of the letter
as you move through them.
At the same time, they're not completely repetitive.
So one of the things that makes it,
I think, particularly fascinating that quite suddenly
you'll come across a reference to some new behavior
or new instance that's really struck the doctor
and written down and recorded very much
on the spur of the moment.
And that could be a really exciting discovery
where you come across those.
And they're often intriguing and a little bit opaque.
Clearly, a lot of what the King was doing
was something which everyone felt a degree of embarrassment
discussing.
There was extreme language.
There are gross references.
There was discussion of his emotional and sexual feelings
towards not only his own family but also to Lady Pembroke.
We get instances of violence, of soiling the bedclothes.
All these instances of disgust with a degree of
frankness, but at the same time a degree of reserve
in the way they're expressed.
And trying to pick together all the different bits of evidence
to work out what was actually happening at various points
involves quite a degree of detective work.
And it's really quite interesting work.
Because although some of this has
been discussed in previous writings,
quite a lot of the details of the King's behavior
hadn't really been explored because
these particular doctors' reports weren't
used by most historians.
And one of the tasks we're putting ourselves
to try and complete, while we're working on these papers
from the project, is to try and come
to an understanding of what the King's behavior
and thinking while he was unwell might tell us
about his attitudes as monarch more generally.