epilepsy became finally so great that Parlement again and again. opposed the alienation of parts of the royal domain for this purpose.

65

Now, it seems fair, from the sypmtoms and from the remedies employed by Louis, to conclude that the King was very sick with some nervous malady, and that the particular malady could not be anything else than epilepsy.

But if Louis had epilepsy, why did not the physician announce the fact? The reason in the Middle Ages, even more than to-day, was that epilepsy was a reflection on the patient and upon his parents, and its existence was always concealed when it was possible. Hence, for example, the silence of Commines upon the remedies taken by the King.

This fact explains why Louis had recourse to a strange procedure: He made gifts and asked the intercession of the saint protecting against the quartain fever, not that he might be spared, but that it might please God to send him that disease. "Because," he explains, "the doctors say that I have a sickness of which I may never be cured unless I have the quartain fever.'

History as such cannot explain this strange request, but medieval medicine does so without trouble and in this way. Hippocrates 2000 years ago laid down the principle of the substitution of one disease for another. "Persons taken with the quartain fever," he says, "are never taken with the great sickness [epilepsy], and, if taken first with that affection they get the quartain fever, the first is healed by the second." "

Louis had epilepsy, and any lingering doubt as to the fact is dispelled by the direct statement of Gaguin that he had it: "At that time [1480] Louis began to be very sick. For the comitial sickness [epilepsy], which for a long time had oppressed him, demanded the most diligent efforts of his physicians."

99 68

"Brachet, L., British Museum, Egerton Mss. No. 1668, fol. 299.

"Arch. du Cher, Fonds du Chapitre, d. Raynal, Hist. du Berry, III, 132. Brachet, LXXX.

"Les individus pris de fièvre quarte ne sont jamais atteints de la grande maladie (l'épilepsie); et, si, pris d'abord de cette affection, la fièvre quarte leur survient, celle-ci les guêrit de celle-là." Hippocrates, Epidémies, VI, 6, 5 (tr. Littré, V, 325). Brachet, LXXXII.

".... Sed per id tempus aegrotare maxime Ludovicus coepit. Nam comitiali morbo cum inter dum premeretur, . . . . Quamobrem medicorum diligenti opera usus est." Robert Gaguin, f. 279, Brachet, LXXIX.

....

It is perfectly clear, therefore, that Louis was not a Tiberius, exhausting every means to please his jaded senses, but a miserable nervous wreck, trying to recover his health by the most advanced scientific treatment of his age, and if he is not an object of compassion, his actions, at least, demand sympathetic interpretation.

The fact that Louis suffered many years from attacks of epilepsy is in itself sufficient indication of a very serious nervous condition, whatever produced it. He had a bad inheritance of gout, insanity mania, and obsessions of one kind or another from his various ancestors. Space does not permit of a discussion of this statement, but Brachet's researches" furnish ample warrant for the assertion that the terrain in the King's case was very bad indeed.

Before going further, it is desirable to recall the medical hypothesis mentioned earlier, that in cases of hereditary neurasthenics, after a severe or exhausting illness, some form of mental disturbance is a more or less certain sequence.

The pathological history of Louis XI forms no exception to the general formula, and, following his bitter experience at Péronne, in 1468, and his very serious illness in 1479, there are recorded the following acts which can be interpreted only as psychopathic outbursts, latent or repressed before, but common in one form or other to all hereditary degenerates: (a) Louis develops a mania for lavish expenditures (a form of megalomania) so foreign to his general character; (b) a morbid fear of death, an obsession with Louis (thanatophobia); (c) a mania for collecting things, simply for the sake of collection (collectomania); (d) an irresponsible mania for seizing things which he wanted (kleptomania); and finally, (e) a morbid love for animals (zoophilia).

His illness in 1479 was so severe as to lead to the report that the King was not only helpless, but was actually dead." The pivotal

....

"His Pathologie Mentale devotes something like 700 pages to the subject. 70 “. . . . Wherefore the report was widely spread throughout all the lands of the Duke that the King himself had declined into such weakness of body that he could neither ride horseback nor be conveyed in a chariot, nor could he get any better either by the aid or diligence of his physicians. This popular rumor filled not only the lands of the Duke, but very many of the provinces of the realm as well, so that many reviled him and secretly cursed him as not sick but dead.” “. . . . Ex eó re rumor increbuit per omnes terras ducis quod ipse rex in talem corporis sui invaletudinem incurrerat, quod nunquam nec equo, nec carru vectari posset, nec inde ulla

point of his reign is here, and by reason of that very sickness. For it is from this illness that a series of acts may be dated which should be classed as explosions of megalomania.

He purchased 22 caps at once, during the winter of 1478-79, for example, paying 700 francs apiece for them—a very significant change from the avaricious Louis. After this year he changed his habits completely, dressed extravagantly, and gave away lavishly. Commines, of the earlier part of his reign, says: "The King dresses very shabbily, so badly that it could not be worse. The material is bad enough at any time, and he wears an old hat, different from the rest, with a lead image on it.' But after 1479 Commines is obliged to record the fact, already cited, that he "dressed richly, a thing which he had never been accustomed to do before, and wore only satin robes lined with good marten fur, and he gave some of these to persons without their asking." Further evidence of this lavish giving is found in the sums which he gave his physician," and in his excessive gifts to the saints."

He had a morbid fear of death. For a long time during his reign the fact that the King was terribly afraid of death was known and played upon. He released Cardinal Balue and Bishop Berdun from their cages because of the fear that God would send judgment upon him for keeping a cardinal and a bishop in chains. Furthermore, his fear that he would die was so great that he became an absolute slave to his physician," Coictier, to whom,

medicorum ope aut industria convalescere. Qui rumor nedum terras ducis, sed plurimas etiam regni provincias vulgo adimplevit; ita ut etiam eum, nedum ægrotum, sed mortuum esse plures susurrarent et clanculo jactitarent." Basin, Hist. Ludow. XI, vol. 3, Lib. VI, Cap. XIII, pp. 40-50. 71 "Nostre roy se habilloit fort court, et si mal que pis ne pouvoit, et essez mauvais drap aucunes fois, et portoit ung mauvais chappeau, different des autres, et ung imaige de plom dessus." (Commynes, ed Dupont, I, 166. Brachet, CI.)

"In less than eight months he gave to Coictier, his physician, 98,000

crowns.

13 “. . . . A great part of the domains were in this way disposed of, and had he lived a few years longer the revenues of the kingdom would have passed into the hands of the churchmen." Duclos, Louis XI, II, 319.

"". . . . The doctor used him very roughly indeed; one would not have given such outrageous language to one's servants as he gave to the King, who stood in such awe of him that he durst not forbid him his presence.” Commines, Scobel, edit. II, 74.

according to Commines," he paid 10,000 crowns a month in the hope that he would lengthen the King's life and all that Coictier had to do to get anything that he wanted was to threaten to leave." Everyone apparently knew about this fear, for Sixtus IV, to win his favor, let Louis know that he had granted indulgence to all such as should visit churches to pray for his recovery. Even Charles the Bold seems to have known the abject terror to which the King gave way; and Commines was, of course, thoroughly familiar with it. His account leaves no doubt at all about the fact, for he says: "Never was a man more fearful of death nor used more means to prevent it. He had, all his life long, commanded and requested his servants . . . . that whenever we saw him in any danger of death we should not tell him of it, but merely admonish him to confess himself, without ever mentioning that cruel and shocking word' death,'"" and Commines, otherwise so careful of the reputation of the King, nevertheless confesses that when St. Francis de Paul came to him from Rome, Louis fell upon his knees before the hermit and besought him to prolong his life.”

His voluntary isolation, which historians have found so hard to explain, may have been a sign of his morbid mental condition after 1479, but it seems plausible to assume that Louis was again following the advice of his physicians. The records show that in the winter of 1478-79 Louis was very sick, and that it was difficult to see him. It was in 1479 that, to avoid being seen and to render access to his person even more difficult, the King had the contrivance of sharp stakes, called " caltrops," placed along the roads approaching his castle, and he continued to shun meeting anyone.

It is profitable to compare the statement of the medical authorities upon this question of seclusion with that of the historians. From a medical standpoint, above all things else prescribed for epileptics was isolation. The Grant Proprietaire des Choses says: " Above all things should the epileptic avoid harmful foods and association with people, because his malady takes him thus more often than when he is alone.' Barante, as an example

75 Ibid., II, 71.

76 Ibid., 74-75.

77 Commines, ed. Scobel, II, 72.

78

79.66

Ibid., II, 56.

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Devant toutes choses ilz se doivent garder de viands nuisibles et de trop habiter en la compagnie des gens, car leur mal les prent plus tost que quand ilz sont tous seulz." Liv., VII, Chap. IX; Brachet, XCV.

of the historians, accounts for the facts thus: "His mistrust," he says, "became horrible, and almost insane; every year he had his castle of Plessis surrounded with more walls, ditches, and rails. On the towers were iron shields and shelter from arrows, and even artillery. More than 1800 of those planks bristling with nails, called 'caltrops,' were distributed on yonder side of the ditch.' There is no question as to his suspicion and distrust of everyone who approached him at this time; and the advice of his physicians probably simply intensified his desire to keep by himself.

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Let us now examine the manifestations of combined megalomania and collectiomania, of which Commines furnishes the evidence, unconsciously, to be sure, but unmistakably:

....

He caused fine horses or mules to be bought at any price whatsoever, but this was not done in France. He had a great passion for dogs, and sent into foreign countries for them; . . . . and bought them at a dearer price than the people asked. He sent into Sicily to buy a mule of an officer of that country, and paid him double the value. . . . He bought strange creatures wherever they could be found. . . He sent into Sweden and Denmark for two sorts of beasts which those countries afforded; . . . . for six of each of these beasts he gave the merchant 4500 Dutch florins. Yet when all these rarities were brought to him he valued them not at all, and many times would not so much as speak to the persons who brought them to him. In short, he behaved after so strange a manner that he was more formidable both to his neighbors and subjects than he had ever been before."

The significant circumstance in this case is that Louis paid the extravagant sum of 125,000 francs, in modern money, apiece, for certain animals, which he would not look at when they were brought to him. This indifference taken together with the fact that he gave more for what he bought than anyone asked for the animal, is plainly pathological. Commines makes it appear that all this took place in the last years of the King's life, but the records show that similar purchases were made as early as 1479.

Suspicion points to Louis as an hereditary degenerate. His actions seem to furnish a most clear-cut manifestation of the conventional stigmata of degenerate zoophilia-that is to say, a morbid love for animals and a hypersensitiveness as to their comfort. These stigmata are (1) extravagance of purchase; (2) indifference of the purchaser; and (3) hypersensitiveness to the suffering of sick animals. The first two traits are common to morbid collectiomania, the third, always associated with indifference to the