King George III Tee Shirt by
retrofitthefuture
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King George III is largely remembered for those periods when he lost his mind due to the 1994 movie 'The Madness of King George' starring the delightful Helen Mirren as Queen Charlotte (she really needs to be careful or she will be typecast) Actually, King George never saw the movie, cinema wasn't around back then, but I'm convinced that he wouldn't have liked it. Anyway, he probably wasn't as mad as everyone says - boffins have tested a sample of the King’s hair and found that it contains over 300 times the toxic level of arsenic. King George's bizarre behaviour and wild outbursts were treated as insanity, the poor bugger was bound in a straitjacket and chained to a chair to control his ravings. King George was officially mad (by the standards of the time) but then, in the 1970's, a new and controversial diagnosis was made. Two psychiatrists looked over the king's medical records and noticed a key symptom; dark red urine - a classic and unmistakable sign of a rare blood disorder called porphyria which can cause severe abdominal pain, cramps, and even seizure-like epileptic fits. Porphyria attacks can be triggered by a wide range of substances - alcohol, common medication, even monthly hormones and possibly arsenic. The most common medication he was given was James' powders, a routine medicine he was being given several times a day - made of a substance called antimony and antimony, even when purified, contains significant traces of arsenic. The arsenic from the very medication he was being given to control his "madness" was triggering more attacks and his porphyric attacks had been brought on after a lifetime's arsenic accumulated in his body, and then were made much more prolonged and more severe by the medicine to treat him. Of course when he died, his son, the Prince Regent became King George IV and he really was as mad as a box of frogs (and most likely addicted to laudanum)
