Foreign News: The Crown

¶ Scarcely more than a dozen of the 446,726,752 subjects of George V knew until last week that during His Majesty’s illness he has raved in delirium, suffered from a dry, cracked tongue, and turned a livid, bluish color—temporarily.

A statement to this startling effect and a masterly review of the Sovereign’s entire illness was issued, last week, by the Royal physicians, and printed simultaneously in the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. The thirteen days from Dec. 2 to Dec. 15 were mentioned as the most critical; and His Majesty’s condition of last week was described thus: “It will be apparent to medical men that not only the severity and the length of the infection but the exhaustion resulting therefrom must make progress slow and difficult.

“At the same time the dangerous phases of the illness have been surmounted and there are increasingly solid grounds for hoping that recovery will result from this long and anxious struggle.”

The “first stage” of the Royal case was described as “gradual in its onset . . . a general infection . . . little or no cough … a sense of illness—yet a wish, born of quiet courage and the habit of duty, to make light of the illness and hold on to work, thus adding to the wear and tear of the fever.”

“The second phase,” the report continued, “was one of increasing toxaemia [poisoning of the blood] with a dusky appearance, dry, cracked tongue, periods of delirium and exhaustion—in short, a clinical picture resembling that of a case of severe typhoid fever in the third and fourth weeks—but with the added anxiety of attacks of dyspnoea [labored breathing due to ineffective action of the heart] and cyanosis [a disordered condition of the circulation, causing a livid, bluish color in the skin], due to strain on the heart.

“. . . later the temperature rose rather abruptly to a higher level and on Dec. 12 there was evidence at the extreme right base of effusion which had commenced between the lung and diaphragm. Drainage by means of a rib resection was performed on the same day under general anaesthesia—gas, oxygen and ether. . . .

“To stimulate the vitality of the tissues a brief, general exposure to ultraviolet rays from a mercury lamp has been made each day since Dec. 15. There is reason to think that this employment of ultraviolet rays has, in combination with the treatment mentioned in previous statements, been beneficial.”

¶ For the first time in over 30 days doctors and nurses withdrew, for go minutes, last week, permitting His Majesty and Her Majesty to be alone.

¶ For the first time Her Majesty presided as Chairwoman of the Crown Council, despite the presence of Edward of Wales, who had been expected to sit as Chairman. Business before the Council consisted in routine exercise of the authority vested in the Crown. However, since the Council does not possess the King’s power of creating peers, the usual “New

Year’s Honors List” of new creations could not be issued on Jan. 1, 1929.

¶ H. R. H. Prince George returned to London from Bermuda and Manhattan, last week; and H. R. H. Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, hove home from South Africa.

¶ Her Majesty the Queen and Empress Mary greatly relieved popular apprehension by alighting at the Zoo and seeming interested while raw meat was flung to lions.

At this tacit assurance that His Majesty was out of danger, the British public plunged into previously suspended Christmas shopping with unparalleled ferocity. Women who fainted in department store crushes totaled 37 the first day.