Tribute to the legend Jacques Daniel Michel Piccoli (27 December 1925 – 12 May 2020)

Jacques Daniel Michel Piccoli (27 December 1925 – 12 May 2020) was a French actor, producer and film director with a career spanning 70 years. He was lauded as one of the greatest French character actors of his generation who played a wide variety of roles and worked with many acclaimed directors
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Life and career

Michel Piccoli: The great seducer is dead Archyworldys

Piccoli was born in Paris to a musical family; his French mother was a pianist and his Swiss father was a violinist. He appeared in many different roles, from seducer to cop to gangster to Pope, in more than 170 movies. He appeared in six films directed by Luis Buñuel including:

Belle de Jour (1967)

Belle de Jour (1967) - Photo Gallery - IMDb

Belle de Jour (1967) 

Michel Piccoli! With Geneviève Page Twitter Belle de Jour (1967) Michel Piccoli

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The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972),

Discreet Charms & Obscure Objects

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie movie review (1972) Roger Ebert

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie Movie review – The Upcoming

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Also appeared as Brigitte Bardot's husband in Jean-Luc Godards Contempt (1963)

Contempt (1963) - Filmaffinity

Contempt - Jean-Luc Godard - Film - The New York Times

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Also as the main antagonist in Alfred Hitchcocks Topaz (1969).

Week 50: 'Topaz' – 1969 (With images) Alfred hitchcock Pinterest

Michel Piccoli: 10 essential films BFI

1000 Frames of Topaz (1969) - frame 820 - The Alfred Hitchcock Wiki

He also appeared in numerous films by Claude Sautet, sometimes co-starring in them with Romy Schneider.

In the 1990s, Michele Piccoli also worked as a director on a number of films. One of his last leading roles was his portrayal of a depressed, newly elected pope in Nanni Moretti's  We Have a Pope (2011).

We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam)  Amazon.com 

We Have a Pope movie review & film summary (2011) Roger Ebert

Eye For Film: Michel Piccoli - obituary

We Have a Pope movie review & film summary (2012) Roger Ebert

Piccoli was part of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés circle in the 1950s, which included Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He was a member of the French Communist Party in this era.

Jean-Paul Sartre Biography, Books, Philosophy, & Facts Britannica

A life-long left-winger, he objected to repression in the Soviet bloc, and supported the Solidarity trade union in Poland.  Piccoli married three times, first to Éléonore Hirt, then for eleven years to the singer Juliette Gréco she was born in Montpellier to an absent Corsican father, Gérard Gréco, and a mother from Bordeaux, Juliette Lafeychine (1899-1978).

Juliëtte Greco Pin on veil of smoke Pinterest

Juliette Greco Movie Photo Starstills.com

You're the child of rape". She was raised by her maternal grandparents in Bordeaux with her older
sister Charlotte. After the death of her grandparents, her mother took her two daughters back to come live with her in Paris. In 1938, she became a ballerina at the Opéra Garnier, and finally to Ludivine Clerc. He had one daughter from his first marriage, Anne-Cordélia.

Michel Piccoli : Romy Schneider, Juliette Gréco, Ludivine Clerc Elle

Jacques Daniel Michel Piccoli died from complications of a stroke on 12 May 2020, aged 94



Text source wikipedia and images as writed thanks for sharing

The World Health Organization has made a list of the most dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

For the first time ever, the World Health Organization has drawn up a list of the highest priority needs for new antibiotics — marching orders, it hopes, for the pharmaceutical industry.

The list, which was released Monday, enumerates 12 bacterial threats, grouping them into three categories: critical, high, and medium.

"Antibiotic resistance is growing and we are running out of treatment options. If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time," said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, the WHO's assistant director-general for health systems and innovation.

"The pipeline is practically dry."

Three bacteria were listed as critical:

• Acinetobacter baumannii bacteria that are resistant to important antibiotics called carbapenems. These are highly drug resistant bacteria that can cause a range of infections for hospitalized patients, including pneumonia, wound, or blood infections.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which are resistant to carbapenems. These bacteria can cause skin rashes and ear infectious in healthy people but also severe blood infections and pneumonia when contracted by sick people in the hospital.

• Enterobacteriaceae that are resistant to both carbepenems and another class of antibiotics, cephalosporins. This family of bacteria live in the human gut and includes bugs such as E. coli and Salmonella.

Notably missing from the list is the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. That was not included, Kieny said, because the need for new antibiotics to treat it has already been designated the highest priority.

Although mounting concerns about the worsening problem of antibiotic resistance have reinvigorated research efforts, producing new antibiotics is an expensive and challenging task.

The international team of experts who drew up the new list urged researchers and pharmaceutical companies to focus their efforts on a type of bacteria known as Gram negatives. (The terminology relates to how the bacteria respond to a stain — developed by Hans Christian Gram — used to make them easier to see under a microscope.)

Dr. Nicola Magrini, a scientist with the WHO's department of innovation, access and use of essential medicines, said pharmaceutical companies have recently spent more efforts trying to find antibiotics for Gram positive bacteria, perhaps because they are easier and less costly to develop.

Microscopic image of gram-negative Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria (pink-red rods) Credit: wikipedia

Gram negative bacteria typically live in the human gut, which means when they cause illness it can be serious bloodstream infections or urinary tract infections. Gram positive bacteria are generally found outside the body, on the skin or in the nostrils.

Kieny said the 12 bacteria featured on the priority list were chosen based on the level of drug resistance that already exists for each, the numbers of deaths they cause, the frequency with which people become infected with them outside of hospitals, and the burden these infections place on health care systems.

Paradoxically, though, she and colleagues from the WHO could not provide an estimate of the annual number of deaths attributable to antibiotic-resistant infections. The international disease code system does not currently include a code for antibiotic-resistant infections; it is being amended to include one.

The critical pathogens are ones that cause severe infections and high mortality in hospital patients, Kieny said. While they are not as common as other drug-resistant infections, they are costly in terms of health care resources needed to treat infected patients and in lives lost.

Six others were listed as high priority for new antibiotics. That grouping represents bacteria that cause a large number of infections in otherwise healthy people. Included there is the bacteria that causes gonorrhea, for which there are almost no remaining effective treatments.

Three other bacteria were listed as being of medium priority, because they are becoming increasingly resistant to available drugs. This group includes Streptococcus pneumoniae that is not susceptible to penicillin. This bacterium causes pneumonia, ear and sinus infections, as well as meningitis and blood infections.

The creation of the list was applauded by others working to combat the rise of antibiotic resistance.

"This priority pathogens list, developed with input from across our community, is important to steer research in the race against drug resistant infection — one of the greatest threats to modern health," said Tim Jinks, head of drug-resistant infections for the British medical charity Wellcome Trust.

"Within a generation, without new antibiotics, deaths from drug-resistant infection could reach 10 million a year. Without new medicines to treat deadly infection, lifesaving treatments like chemotherapy and organ transplant, and routine operations like caesareans and hip replacements, will be potentially fatal."

The full list is:

Priority 1: Critical

1. Acinetobacter baumannii, carbapenem-resistant

2. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, carbapenem-resistant

3. Enterobacteriaceae, carbapenem-resistant, ESBL-producing

Priority 2: High

4. Enterococcus faecium, vancomycin-resistant

5. Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant, vancomycin-intermediate and resistant

6. Helicobacter pylori, clarithromycin-resistant

7. Campylobacter spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant

8. Salmonellae, fluoroquinolone-resistant

9. Neisseria gonorrhoeae, cephalosporin-resistant, fluoroquinolone-resistant

Priority 3: Medium

10. Streptococcus pneumoniae, penicillin-non-susceptible

11. Haemophilus influenzae, ampicillin-resistant

12. Shigella spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Businessinsider . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

An alternate History: If Martin Luther King had not been killed?

Credit: Wikipedia/Rowland Scherman   

A life devoted to peace ended in a sickening act of violence on April 4, 1968. The gunshot that echoed across the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, not only took the life of 39-year-old Martin Luther King Jr., it silenced one of the world’s most strident voices against racism, war and poverty. It also left a lingering question: How would the course of history have been different had the social activist and civil rights leader not been felled by an assassin’s bullet nearly 50 years ago?

Had Martin Luther King Jr. not been killed as he stood on the Lorraine Motel’s second-floor balcony on that spring evening in 1968, it’s almost certain that the Baptist preacher would have remained a powerful voice against injustice. While King would have spoken out against racism in the ensuing years, it’s important to remember that the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner had begun to pivot his activism to economic inequality and antiwar causes by the time of his death, says Stanford historian Clayborne Carson, who also serves as director of the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. It was economic inequality and fair housing that led him to march through a rainstorm of bottles and bricks in Chicago in 1966 and drew him to Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers.

Inscription marking the spot where Martin Luther King Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech.” (Credit: jcarillet/iStockphoto.com)

“I don’t think of him primarily as a civil rights leader during the last years of his life,” Carson tells HISTORY. “Once the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, his goals extended beyond civil rights at that point. In his Nobel Prize lecture he pointed out the triple evils in the world. Racial oppression was one, but poverty and war were the other two, and those were what he had turned his attention to.”

“The entrenched racism King confronted during his trip to Chicago in 1966 and the escalation of the Vietnam War broadened his understanding of civil rights to include the entire national landscape and the nation’s role abroad,” says Lillie Edwards, professor emerita of history and African-American studies at Drew University. “By 1968, this broader landscape signaled that he was fully engaged in keeping pace with new arenas of social justice and willing to embrace new paradigms and new strategies.”

High on King’s list of plans was the Poor People’s Campaign, which he had announced in November 1967 along with other civil rights leaders. He planned for an initial group of 2,000 impoverished Americans of all races to descend upon Washington, D.C., in May 1968 to lobby for an “economic bill of rights” that included jobs, unemployment insurance, a fair minimum wage and more low-income housing.

Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the March on Washington in August 1963. (Credit: Robert W. Kelley/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Before they could march into the nation’s capital, however, King’s followers found themselves marching behind a a mule-drawn wagon bearing his casket through the streets of Atlanta. The Poor People’s Campaign went on as scheduled, but it floundered without King’s leadership. The “economic bill of rights” never came to fruition.

Edwards says King’s presence would have boosted the profile of subsequent anti-poverty campaigns. “Supporting garbage workers in Memphis signals to us that King would have been a hands-on participant in movements to empower the poor and working class. His presence would have provided additional gravitas, leverage and media attention to local movements that the media and general population might have ignored,” she says.


Had King lived, he likely would have continued to speak out against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Exactly one year before his death, King delivered one of the most controversial speeches of his life inside Manhattan’s Riverside Church in which he called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and said it was morally indefensible to send African-American troops to “guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”

Martin Luther King Jr. (Credit: Don Carl Steffen/Getty Images)

While some argue that racial relations would have been different had King lived, Carson says that expectations that King could have dramatically altered the ensuing direction of the civil rights movement, “economic bill of rights” and Vietnam War discount the power of the turning tide of the country. “The United States is like an ocean liner. One person is not going to change its momentum and direction. Even a great individual would not be able to turn it around and make it go in a different direction. The basic attitudes of people don’t change rapidly, and the nation was heading in a much more conservative direction after the 1964 election. We entered an era in which it was difficult enough to defend the gains that had been made before.”


In the year before King’s death, peace advocates tried to draft him to join a third-party antiwar ticket to run with pediatrician Benjamin Spock in the 1968 presidential election. King ultimately decided against a try for political office, and Carson doesn’t believe that he would ever have done so in the future, unlike civil rights leaders such as Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson who were at King’s side when he died. 

“He made a decision that he was not going to be a candidate for office,” Carson says. “He would continue to be a voice in the political arena but as a private citizen.”

Ironically, there may never have been a federal holiday honoring King had he not been killed so suddenly in 1968. King was not a universally revered figure at the time of his assassination. In the five years leading up to his death, King appeared on the top 10 of Gallup’s most-admired list only twice—in 1964 and 1965. In 1967 Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, ranked eighth on the list, while King could not crack the top 10. Gallup reported that nearly twice as many Americans in 1966 had a negative view of King as a positive one—and that was even prior to his controversial Riverside Church speech. By 1999, however, a Gallup poll found that King ranked behind only Mother Teresa as the century’s most-admired person.

Edward says public memory of King would have been quite different had he lived. “King is a martyr whose nobility of consciousness—non-violence—is embedded in the American and international consciousness,” she says.

 “However, King’s martyrdom has also diluted, if not erased, the power of his militant and revolutionary messages about human dignity and taking immediate rather than piecemeal action. Some people find it easy to embrace what I call ‘the birthday King’ who is devoid of urgency and militancy. The public has framed a ‘moderate’ King as a foil to a ‘militant’ Malcolm X for this reason.”


Death brought King a reverence that never existed during his life, and in 1983 the federal government designated his birthday as an annual holiday. “If he had lived, there clearly wouldn’t be a Martin Luther King holiday,” Carson says. “I think it was easier to see the idea of the holiday when he was no longer around.”

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by History . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Top 10 scientists who were killed by their experiments

Photo: curiosity

Not always an experiment is successful sometimes the consequences can be fatal, as shown in these 10 cases.

These events are redefining the proverb "no good thing goes unpunished." For these scientists, desire for knowledge has led to their death.

1  
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (1785), French scholar of the eighteenth century has died following an accident with an experimental air balloon when it was deflated at 457 meters. It is known as the first victim of an  "aviation" accident.

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier – Pilâtre de Rozier

The first untethered balloon flight, by Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes on 21 November 1783. Photo: wikipedia

2
Max Valier (1930) died in a laboratory explosion of jet engine fueled with liquid oxygen.

Max Valier Pioneers of Flight

Valier in a rocket car, circa April 1930. Photo: wikipedia

3
Sieur Freminet (1772) created one of the first diving equipment. He died from a test underwater equipment after a malfunction.

Photo: Wikiwand

4
Tim Samaras (2013) was meteorologist looking for tornadoes to study them and to develop a method by which they can be predicted. He died when a tornado swallowed up his car.

Storm chaser Tim Samaras Photo: wikipedia

5
Harry Daghlian Jr. (1945), during the construction of the first atomic bomb dropped the brick core of a nuclear reactor. His hands began to "burn" instant, then fell into a coma and died 25 days later.

A picture of Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. Photo: wikipedia

Harry Daghlian - Wikiwand

6
Elizabeth Fleischman (1905) introduced radiographs in military hospitals to identify bullets. She used her own body in experiments that led to the illness of cancer.

Elizabeth Fleischman, American X-ray pioneer (1899) Photo: wikipedia

7
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1786) independently discovered oxygen, chlorine and manganese. Ingesting toxic substances regularly until he died from mercury poisoning.

Carl Wilhelm Scheele from Familj-Journalen1874 Photo: wikipedia

8
Louis Slotin (1946) died after accidental irradiation of uranium and plutonium during atomic weapons research.

Brent Bellamy on Twitter: "One thing I love about Winnipeg is finding treasures like a hidden little park dedicated to Dr. Louis Slotin, near his home. He was a scientist who died

Louis Slotin's Los Alamos badge mugshot, taken sometime while he was working on the Manhattan Project Photo: wikipedia

9
Marie Curie (1934) died of leukemia after exposure for more than 30 years to radioactive materials.

Marie Curie (1867-1934) Polish-born French physicist in 1931 Stock Photo - Alamy

Marie Curie - the most important women in science

10
Alexander Bogdanov (1928) believed that blood transfusions are the key to eternal youth. He died after receiving blood from a patient with malaria and tuberculosis.

Belarussian writer Alexander A Bogdanov Photo: wikipedia

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Curiosity. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

The death of Ragnar Lodbrok and his sons' vengeance in the last episodes from season 4

When king Ælla of Northumbria learns of the pillaging army, he musters an overwhelming force and defeats Ragnar's army. Ragnar is dressed in a silken jacket which Aslaug had made and nothing can pierce it. Finally, he is taken prisoner and thrown into a snake pit. However, as the snakes do not bite him, the Englishmen take off his clothes and then the snakes kill him for good.

Ragnar's sons attack England but Ivar does not want to fight as the English army is too large; he fears they will lose and will have to go home again. Ivar, however, stays in England and asks Ælla for wergild, claiming that he can not go home without some compensation to show his brothers.

King Ælla of Northumbria (Ivan Kaye) photo: wikia

Ivar only asks for as much land as he can cover with an ox's hide. He cuts it into such a fine long string of hide that he can encircle an area large enough for a city. When this is done, he lays the foundations for a city which becomes York. He allies himself with all of England and finally all the chieftains in the region become loyal to Ivar and his brothers.

Then, Ivar tells his brothers to attack England. During the battle Ivar sides with his brothers and so do many of the English chieftains with their people, out of loyalty to Ivar. Ælla is taken captive and in revenge Ragnar's sons carve the blood eagle from him.

Ivar becomes king over north-eastern England which his forefathers owned (i.e. Ivar Vidfamne and Sigurd Ring), and he has two sons, Yngvar and Husto. They obey their father Ivar and torture king Edmund the Martyr and take his realm.

An 1857 painting by August Malmström depicting King Aella's messenger before Ragnar Lodbrok's sons. photo: wikipedia

Ragnar's sons pillage in England, Wales, France and Italy, until they come to the town of Luna in Italy. When they come back to Scandinavia, they divide the kingdom so that Björn Ironside has Uppsala and Sweden, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye has Zealand, Scania, Halland, Viken, Agder, all the way to Lindesnes and most of Oppland, and Hvitserk receives Reidgotaland (Jutland) and Wendland.

Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye marries king Ælla's daughter Blaeja and they have a son named Harthacnut, who succeeds his father as the king of Zealand, Scania and Halland, but Viken rebels and breaks loose. Harthacanute has a son named Gorm, who is big and strong but not as wise as his ancestors.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Wikipedia. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Henry VIII: One of the most controversial figures in European history (Explosive anger, headaches, insomnia, memory problems, inability to control impulses, and even impotence)

Henry, c. 1531 photo: wikipedia

Updated 12/05/2020

He is one of the most controversial figures in European history, best remembered for executing two of his six wives and for breaking away from the Catholic Church in what became known as the Reformation. Now, a new study concluding that Henry VIII suffered brain damage caused by a jousting injury offers the strongest explanation of his erratic behaviour “short of miraculously finding his preserved brain in jar,” its lead author has claimed.

Henry VIII (1491-1547) - HistoryExtra

According to a team of US researchers led by Dr Arash Salardini, behavioural neurologist and co-director of the Yale Memory Clinic, the Tudor monarch may have suffered repeated traumatic brain injuries similar to those experienced by American Football players. This, researchers claim, would explain Henry’s explosive anger, headaches, insomnia, memory problems, inability to control impulses, and even impotence.

Published by Yale Memory Clinic, a memory and cognitive clinic at Yale School of Medicine, the study claims that “Henry suffered from many symptoms which can unambiguously be attributed to traumatic brain injury”.

Arash Salardini Yale School of Medicine - Yale University

In an interview with History Extra, Dr Salardini said: “I thought [Henry] was a man with personality disorder, possibly narcissistic with sociopathic tendencies who had some form of mood disorder later on his life and took it out on his subjects. That is not what I ended up finding.”

Dr Salardini said the researchers went into the study with an open mind, originally writing it as a case report exploring the probability of the various diseases that Henry might have suffered. However, Salardini and his team were surprised to find that “the picture was so consistent with the sequel of chronic concussion, intellectual honesty would dictate writing about traumatic brain injury in Henry.”

Taking a neurological, rather than a historical, approach, the researchers “gathered data about the patient and localised most of the symptoms to the frontosubcortical circuitry neural pathways that affect memory, organisation and behavioural control]and the pituitary the gland that controls hormones”.


From this “an anatomical and pathologically consistent medical timeline emerged which I think should be the strongest evidence in support of the concussion, short of miraculously finding [Henry VIII’s] preserved brain in a jar”, said Salardini.

King Henry VIII in a procession on his way to a tournament clad in armour and riding a horse, 1511. He is accompanied by courtiers who are holding the flaps of a tent so that the king can be seen. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In the paper, researchers dismissed a number of theories that have been previously been put forward to explain Henry’s changed behaviour from 1536, after which time it is argued that Henry “became cruel, petty and tyrannical”. These include diabetes, hypothyroidism and psychosis – none of which, researchers claim, “can account for the whole picture”.

Instead the paper argues that “traumatic brain injury could have caused diffuse axonal injury a common brain injury in which the wires that connect the cells in the brain become damaged which led to a change in the psychological makeup of Henry, and traumatic brain injury may have contributed to his other medical issues by causing pituitary dysfunction and endocrinopathies (hormone problems).”

Did the "Dogs Lick Henry's Blood" After His Funeral?

The paper explains: “We know of at least three major head injuries in Henry’s life. He may have had headaches and more subtle changes to his personality after his first head injury [in March 1524, when the king was unseated after a jousting lance entered his open visor], but there is a marked stepwise change in him after 1536. It is entirely plausible, though perhaps not provable, that repeated traumatic brain injury lead to changes in Henry’s personality.”

The team examined Henry’s memory problems, headaches, insomnia and lack of impulse control. Of his memory problems, researchers said: “In July 1536, Henry’s son and possible heir Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset, died of tuberculosis. He was buried in near-secret in the presence of his father-in-law the Duke of Norfolk, and two other personages, by the king’s own instructions. Yet in a few days Henry appears to have forgotten his own role in the funeral and was accusing the Duke of Norfolk of inappropriate behaviour towards FitzRoy.

Was Henry FitzRoy, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII, murdered? Spartacus Educational

“There is another illustrative episode which occurred in 1546: the king loved religious debates and during one acrimonious argument between Catherine Parr and [bishop and statesman] Stephen Gardiner he unreasonably ordered the transportation of the queen to the Tower of London. The next day Henry appears to have forgotten about the incident and was consoling his distraught wife. When the soldiers arrived to take her away, he could not remember the original orders he had given and had to be prompted to remember the episode. When he remembered he flew into another fit of rage.”

Armour for field and tournament of King Henry VIII, 1540 (metal), possibly intended for the May Day tournament, 15 May 1540. Decorated by Giovanni di Maiano or Francis Quelblaunce; based on designs by Hans Holbein the Younger. (Royal Armouries, Leeds, UK / Bridgeman Images)

Turning to Henry’s behaviour, the researchers claim: “The irascibility and changeability of Henry was a source of constant anxiety for Tudor courtiers. Several ambassadors noted the unpredictability of Henry, who was often furious for reasons not immediately obvious to his ministers and advisers.” Henry was also “known to suffer from bouts of ‘mal d’esprit’ or depression with ‘self-pity and more than traces of gloom’”, the paper says.

Discussing Henry’s possible impotence, the researchers cite “rumours which apparently originated with Anne Boleyn and her brother according to Chapuys, the imperial ambassador for the Holy Roman Empire. Anne and George Boleyn were accused of ridiculing the king. Anne appears to have told her sister-in-law that Henry ‘was not adept in the matter of coupling with a woman and that he had neither vertu (skill) nor puissance (vigour)’”.

Anne Boleyn - Wikipedia

A Death Warrant from King Henry VIII Stephen Liddell

The paper also draws on “the inability of Henry to consummate his marriage to Anne of Cleves in 1540. Various excuses were made from ‘misliking of her body for the hanging of her breast and the looseness of her flesh’, to the charge that the king was duped by an unnecessarily complimentary portrait of Anne.” Impotence and weight gain, Dr Salardini told History Extra, “also fit with a growth hormone and sex hormone deficiency which is a known, but less common, manifestation of traumatic brain injury.”

In our interview with Salardini we asked how Henry VIII’s brain injury would be treated were he alive today. “The best treatment for traumatic brain injury is prevention, so wearing helmets was as important then as it is now,” he said. “It was advisable for the king, who seemed particularly accident-prone, to choose a more gentle sport.  

“Secondly, early management of mood regulation appears to be a useful intervention. If St John's wort was available in Henry's time then I would put him on a gram per day. He would also need to take up the Mediterranean diet of his enemies and have complex carbohydrates, monounsaturates and low-fat diet.

“Our knowledge has come a long way since the 16th century, but much of the therapeutics that we have today could have probably be reproduced back then.”


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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Historyextra. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.