Interstate medical journal . to be understood—this panophobia of Charles VII. recurredin his son, the future king, Louis XI. * * * Louis XL is a sovereign who to be understood must be judged fromthe standpoint of psychiatry. Mental pathology reclaims this craftymonarch, for if he is an enigma in history it is because history ha?thought itself capable of doing without the aid of medicine. More than any other holder of the sceptre, Louis XI. lends himself *Paris: Albin Michel. 1909.**Sauval, Antiquites de Paris, t. II., p. 373; following the customary reportsof the provostship of Paris. 684 INTE
Interstate medical journal . to be understood—this panophobia of Charles VII. recurredin his son, the future king, Louis XI. * * * Louis XL is a sovereign who to be understood must be judged fromthe standpoint of psychiatry. Mental pathology reclaims this craftymonarch, for if he is an enigma in history it is because history ha?thought itself capable of doing without the aid of medicine. More than any other holder of the sceptre, Louis XI. lends himself *Paris: Albin Michel. 1909.**Sauval, Antiquites de Paris, t. II., p. 373; following the customary reportsof the provostship of Paris. 684 INTERSTATE MEDICAL JOURNAL to analysis, though at first sight he seems to defy it on account of themelange that he presents of a perfect surety of decision, an inexhaustibleactivity, and a stupefying amorousness, with manifest propensities tothe strangest beliefs and the most absurd practices. This statesman, so reflective and penetrating, this ingenious andcunning mind, so sensitive and acute, believed nothing except what he. wanted to believe, neither moral laws nor conscience; nevertheless hehad faith in the most ridiculous superstitions peculiar to coarse and ig-norant men. His religion was decidedly inferior to that of the MiddleAges, and like the old Merovingian kings in barbarous times, he madehis vows to the Virgin and the Saints of Paradise, by bestowing therichest gifts on the churches which were dedicated to them, in the hopeof gaining their support in his most dishonest enterprises. Mindful of SPECIAL ARTICLE 685 his mental independence even in his superstitions, he did not submit tothe least influence on the part of the clergy.* Have we here sufficient evidence to class one of the greatest kings ofwhich France boasts in the category of the semi-insane? Should ourdeduction be that at certain moments Louis XI. had a veritable in-tellectual functional miopragia? All depends on the significance of theterm semi-insane, which, thanks to Grasset, has to-day quite an unex-pe
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