1 Victor Schœlcher, The Life of Handel (London, 1857), 380; Paul Henry Lang, George Frideric Handel (New York, 1966), 538; Christopher Hogwood, Handel (London, 1984), 229.Google Scholar

2 John Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (London, 1760), 140–1.Google Scholar

3 Johann Mattheson, Georg Friderick Handels Lebensbeschreibung (Hamburg, 1761), a translation and augmentation of Mainwaring's Memoirs. Translated portions appear in Charles Burney, ‘Sketch of a Life of Handel’, in his An Account of the Musical Performances … in Commemoration of Handel (London, 1785; repr. New York, 1979), ∗5. What Mattheson meant by tall is unclear. The most detailed consideration of the height of males in the British Isles is Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter and Annabel Gregory, Height, Health and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1980, Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time, 9 (Cambridge, 1990). The average height of upper-class men about 1750 was 67 inches or 172 cm.Google Scholar

4 John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 5 vols. (London, 1776); reissued in 2 vols. (London, 1853; repr. New York, 1963), 911.Google Scholar

5 Burney, ‘Sketch’, 31.Google Scholar

6 William Coxe, Anecdotes of George Frederick Handel, and John Christopher Smith (London, 1799; repr. New York, 1979), 26.Google Scholar

7 Edward Rimbault, ‘Goupy's Caricature of Handel’, Notes and Queries, 5th ser., 5 (1 April 1876), 263–65; Handel: A Celebration of His Life and Times, 1685–1759, ed. Jacob Simon (London, 1985), 40–1. A colour reproduction of the original image can be found in Early Music, 28 (2000), 32.Google Scholar

8 Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins, Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches and Memoirs (London, 1822), 195–7.Google Scholar

9 Burney, ‘Sketch’, 32.Google Scholar

10 Moderate obesity is defined as 40–99% above normal body weight, severe as 100% or more, but we have no way of determining when or if Handel qualified for either of those categories. See ‘Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults: The Evidence Report’, Obesity Research, 6 (Suppl. 2) (September 1998), 51S–209S.Google Scholar

11 A predisposition to obesity can be established during the antenatal period as a result of specific behaviours by mothers, and ‘People who have low birthweight, or more importantly who are thin or short at birth, are … vulnerable to the long-term effects of becoming obese’, according to D.J.P. Barker, Mothers, Babies, and Health in Later Life (2nd edn, Edinburgh, 1998), 208. For female early-onset binge eaters, paternal rates of obesity and binge eating are significantly higher than normal; see Marsha D. Marcus, Mary Margaret Moulton and Catherine G. Greeno, ‘Binge Eating Onset in Obese Patients with Binge Eating Disorder’, Addictive Behavior, 20 (1995), 747–55. See also Emily B. Spurrell, ‘Age of Onset for Binge Eating: Are There Different Pathways to Binge Eating?’ International Journal of Eating Disorders, 21 (1997), 55–65; and ‘Childhood Predictors of Adult Obesity: A Systematic Review’, International Journal of Obesity, 23 (Suppl. 8) (November 1999), S1–S107. Scientists continue to dispute the heritability of obesity, some claiming up to 90%, others only 30%. See Bouchard, Claude, ‘Genetic Influences on Body Weight’, in Eating Disorders and Obesity: A Comprehensive Handbook, ed. Christopher G. Fairburn and Kelly Brownell (2nd edn New York, 2002), 16–21. See also Bonnie Pelch, ‘Eating-Disordered Families: Issues Between the Generations’, in Eating Disorders: A Reference Sourcebook, ed. Raymond Lemburg (Phoenix, 1999), 121–3, and Adrian Thurstin, ‘Behavioral, Physical, and Psychological Symptoms of Eating Disorders’, 12–17.Google Scholar

12 Mainwaring, Memoirs, 29.Google Scholar

13 Ursula Kirkendale, ‘The Ruspoli Documents on Handel’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 20 (1967), 222–73.Google Scholar

14 Mainwaring, Memoirs, 89. The diet of the British elite could easily exceed caloric requirements as numerous portraits attest. Mrs Delany recorded the extensive array of dishes served at her house and others'; descriptions are scattered through her Autobiography and Correspondence, ed. Lady Llanover, 6 vols. (London, 1861–2). See also Sara Paston-Williams, The Art of Dining: A History of Cooking & Eating (London, 1993). For recipes see Margaretta Acworth's Georgian Cookery Book, ed. Alice and Frank Prochaska (London, 1987). For details of meal times, menus, recipes, and culinary styles see Lehmann, Gilly, The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth Century Britain (Totnes, 2003).Google Scholar

15 Thomas Tryon, Tryon's Letters, upon Several Occasions (London, 1700), 98–104. George Cheyne, An Essay of Health and Long Life (London, 1724), and ‘The Case of the Author’, in The English Malady: Or, A Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds (London, 1733). Thomas Short, A Discourse Concerning the Causes and Effects of Corpulency (London, 1727), 10. John, Lord Hervey, ‘An Account of My Own Constitution and Illness, With Some Rules for the Preservation of Health’, 1731; see his Some Materials Towards Memoirs of the Reign of King George II, ed. Romney Sedgwick, 3 vols. (London, 1931), 961–87. John Arbuthnot, An Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments, and the Choice of Them, According to the Different Constitutions of Human Bodies (London, 1731). Further editions were issued in 1732 (with the addition of a substantial supplement of treatments), 1735–6, 1751, 1756, and in German from Hamburg in 1744. Arbuthnot's chief recommendation for alleviating gout was ‘Abstinence from those things which occasion it’, which were, in addition to ‘an Hereditary Disposition … a too rich and high Diet, and too copious Use of Wine and other spirituous Liquors, especially at Supper; Excess in some other Pleasures; a full gross Habit of Body; the too copious use of acid or sour things’; ibid., 396–7. The significance of a reduced diet for the corpulent had been pointed out by Tryon, who recommended a limited diet including salad, with only water to drink, and much walking. See J.P. Flatt and Swati Gupte, ‘Metabolic Efficiency’, Nutrition, Genetics, and Obesity, ed. George A. Bray and Donna H. Ryan, Pennington Center Nutrition Series, 9 (Baton Rouge, 1999), 73–87 (at 73); and Eric Ravussin, ‘Energy Expenditure and Body Weight’, in Eating Disorders and Obesity, ed. Lemburg, 55–61.Google Scholar

16 Obesity can result when a particular genetic or biochemical makeup exists in a suitable environment and therefore is not necessarily, or of itself, an eating disorder. As Malcolm Flemyng wrote in 1760, ‘Tho’ a voracious appetite be one cause of Corpulency, it is not the only cause; and very often not even the conditio sine qua non thereof. A Discourse on the Nature, Causes and Cure of Corpulency (London, 1760). See also Marsha D. Marcus, ‘Binge Eating in Obesity’, Binge Eating: Nature, Assessment, and Treatment, ed. Christopher G. Fairburn and G. Terence Wilson (New York, 1993), 77–96; and George A. Bray, ‘Obesity: Historical Development of Scientific and Cultural Ideas’, Obesity, ed. Per Björntorp and Bernard N. Brodoff (Philadelphia, 1992), 281–93, first published in the International Journal of Obesity, 14 (1990), 909–26. Two of the most frequent modern ill-effects of obesity are coronary heart disease and diabetes, but, as Handel's longevity shows, obesity need not result in a significantly shortened life-span. See Theodore B. Vanltallie and Edward A. Lew, ‘Estimation of the Effect of Obesity on Health and Longevity’, in Obesity: Theory and Therapy, ed. A.J. Stunkard and T.A. Wadden (2nd edn, New York, 1993), 219–30. For the role of leptin (the protein product of the ob gene, discovered in 1994) in coordinating ‘the responses of brain neuropeptide and neurotransmitter pathways to provide a situationally appropriate regulation of food intake, metabolic rate, energy balance, and fat storage’, see L. Arthur Campfield, ‘Leptin and Body Weight Regulation’, in Eating Disorders and Obesity, ed. Lemburg, 32–6. Samuel Johnson provides a comparable literary example. His eating disorders and size provoked much adverse comment, in part because he did not hide his practice of regurgitation. See Brenda Parry-Jones, ‘A Bulimic Ruminator: The Case of Samuel Johnson’, Psychological Medicine, 22 (1992): 851–62, and John Wiltshire, Samuel Johnson in the Medical World (Cambridge, 1991). John Hawkins was a biographer of Johnson and, unlike his reticence when writing about Handel, could not avoid mentioning Johnson's eating habits, though he did so in as concise a manner as possible; see his The Life of Samuel Johnson (London, 1787).Google Scholar

17 Stephen Blankaart, Physical Dictionary (5th edn, London, 1708), 45; James Quincy, Lexicon Physico-medicum (London, 1719), 52, and s.v. Canine Appetite, 56. See Brenda Parry-Jones, ‘Historical Terminology of Eating Disorders’, Psychological Medicine, 21 (1991), 21–8; and Horst-Ulfert Ziolko, ‘Bulimia: A Historical Outline’, International journal of Eating Disorders, 20 (1996), 345–58. Both ‘bulimy’ and ‘corpulency’ are defined in A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (2nd edn, London, 1763–4), 401–2, 770.Google Scholar

18 Nathaniel Wanley, Wonders of the Little World, or a General History of Man (London, 1678), 387–91. Cases of obesity and of anorexia are given on pp. 46–7 and 589–91 respectively. See Brenda Parry-Jones and William Ll. Parry-Jones, ‘Bulimia: An Archival Review of Its History in Psychosomatic Medicine’, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 10 (1991), 129–43. By 1780 William Cullen was describing various subdivisions of bulimia, including a gormandizing kind (bulimia heluonum); Synopsis nosologiœ methodicœ (3rd edn, Edinburgh, 1780), 2:318.Google Scholar

19 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edn, Washington D.C., 1994), ‘Bulimia Nervosa’, 589–95; ‘Binge-Eating Disorder’, 785–7. For the development of the DSM-IV criteria see Albert J. Stunkard, ‘A History of Binge Eating’, Binge Eating: Nature, Assessment, and Treatment, ed. Christopher G. Fairburn and G. Terence Wilson (New York, 1993), 15–34. See also Carlos M. Grilo, ‘Binge Eating Disorder’, Eating Disorders and Obesity, ed. Lemburg, 178–82. Albert J. Stunkard, ‘Binge-Eating Disorder and Night-Eating Syndrome’, Handbook of Obesity Treatment, ed. Thomas A. Wadden and Albert J. Stunkard (New York, 2002), 107–121; and A.E. Dingemans et al., ‘Binge Eating Disorder: a Review’, International Journal of Obesity, 26 (2002), 299–307. Despite the considerable amount of research conducted since World War II into eating disorders, obesity, and binge eating/bulimia, the topic remains a controversial area of study and definition. For example, there has not been agreement on whether obesity meets the strict medical definition of a disease, as having a specific pathophysiology and a predictable course. G.A. Bray's article ‘Obesity is a chronic, relapsing neurochemical disease’ was assigned the heading ‘Debate’ by the editors of the International Journal of Obesity as recently as 2004 (v. 28, pp. 34–38). If Bray is correct, models for understanding binge eating such as it being an affective disorder or an addiction will need to be down-graded. For specimens of these approaches see Ellen S. Parham, ‘Compulsive Eating: Applying a Medical Addiction Model’, in Obesity: New Directions in Assessment and Management, ed. Theodore B. Vanltallie et al. (Philadelphia, 1995), 185–94; Todd F. Heatherton and Roy F. Baumeister, ‘Binge Eating as Escape From Self-Awareness’, Psychological Bulletin, 110 (1991), 86–108; Heather A. Wheeler, Gerald R. Adams, and Leo Keating, ‘Binge Eating As a Means for Evading Identity Issues: The Association Between an Avoidance Identity Style and Bulimic Behavior’, Identity, 1 (2001), 161–78.Google Scholar

20 Stunkard, ‘Binge-Eating Disorder and Night-Eating Syndrome’, 107–121; and Dingemans, ‘Binge Eating Disorder: a Review’, 299–307.Google Scholar

21 M.S. Faith and D.B. Allison, ‘Assessment of Psychological Status Among Obese Persons’, in Body Image, Eating Disorders, and Obesity, 370. See also Marsha D. Marcus et al., ‘Psychiatric Disorders Among Obese Binge Eaters’, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 9 (1990), 69–77; and Susan Z. Yanovksi et al., ‘Association of Binge Eating Disorder and Psychiatric Comorbidity in Obese Subjects’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 150 (1993), 1472–9.3.0.CO;2-K>CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 According to Roy Baumeister, both binge eating and alcohol abuse are strongly ‘associated with escape from the self’; Escaping the Self: Alcoholism, Spirituality, Masochism, and Other Flights from the Burden of Selfhood (New York, 1991), 165. In this theory, people set unachievably high standards despite fear of failure and pervasive self-doubt. A multi-study review of the psychopathology of obese persons failed to uncover any evidence for the ‘belief that obese persons suffer disproportionately from emotional disturbances’, according to Albert J. Stunkard and Thomas A. Wadden, ‘Psychological Aspects of Human Obesity’, in Obesity, ed. Björntorp and Brodoff, 352–60 (at 353), citing their own study ‘Psychopathology and Obesity’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 499 (1987), 55–65. A more recent review, by M. de Zwaan, of eight studies of obese binge eaters, showed, to the contrary, that subjects were far more likely to present with an affective disorder, typically major depression, than nonbinge-eating control subjects; ‘Binge Eating Disorder and Obesity’, International Journal of Obesity, 25, Suppl. 1 (2001), S51–S55.Google Scholar

23 Thomas A. Wadden et al., ‘Metabolic, Anthropometric, and Psychological Characteristics of Obese Binge Eaters’, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 14 (1993), 17–25; Christopher G. Fairburn et al., ‘Risk Factors for Binge Eating Disorder’, Archives of General Psychiatry, 55 (1998), 425–32; Byron R. Cargill et al., ‘Binge Eating, Body Image, Depression, and Self-Efficacy in an Obese Clinical Population’, Obesity Research, 7 (1999), 379–86; and Myles S. Faith et al., ‘Obesity-Depression Associations in the Population’, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 53 (2002), 935–42.3.0.CO;2-L>CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Alcohol abuse is more likely to be symptomatic of affective disorders such as depression than of binge-eating disorder, according to Julie Carroll Kozyk, Stephen William Touyz, and Peter J.V. Beumont, ‘Is There a Relationship Between Bulimia Nervosa and Hazardous Alcohol Use?‘ International Journal of Eating Disorders, 24 (1998), 95–9.Google Scholar

25 For the relevance of serotonin to both depression and binge eating see John E. Blundell and Jason CG. Halford, ‘Serotonin and Appetite Regulation: Implications for the Pharmacological Treatment of Obesity’, CNS Drugs, 9 (1998), 473–95; and Matthew Keene, ‘Serotonin and the Biology of Bingeing’, in Eating Disorders, 51–4.Google Scholar

26 As it may be the sense ‘of loss of control and negative mood state’ that is the primary characteristic of binge eating, rather than the quantity of food eaten, we should be cautious in diagnosing simply on the basis of the quantity ingested. See Christy F. Telch and W. Stewart Agras, ‘Do Emotional States Influence Binge Eating in the Obese?’ International Journal of Eating Disorders, 20 (1996), 271–9. For a summary of the possible relationships between eating disorders and comorbid symptoms see Cynthia M. Bulick, ‘Anxiety, Depression, and Eating Disorders’, in Eating Disorders and Obesity, 193–8. For the importance of loss of control as a factor in binge eating see William G. Johnson et al., ‘What is a Binge? The Influence of Amount, Duration, and Loss of Control Criteria on Judgments of Binge Eating’, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 27 (2000), 471–79. Handel's self-efficacy—the ability of the self to successfully perform a task—is likely to have been low in the instance of limiting food intake, making it even more difficult to modify his behaviour. See Peter M. Miller et al., ‘Self-Efficacy in Overweight Individuals with Binge Eating Disorder’, Obesity Research, 7 (1999), 552–5. Sexual abuse is recognised as a trigger for binge eating, but as the editors of Sexual Abuse and Eating Disorders point out, ‘some eating-disordered clients were not sexually or physically abused or neglected, and many sexually abused clients do not have eating disorders’; Mark F. Schwartz and Leigh Cohn, ‘Introduction: Eating Disorders and Sexual Trauma’, Sexual Abuse and Eating Disorders, ed. Schwartz and Cohn (New York, 1996), ix-xii (at ix). See also Randy A. Sansone, Michael W. Wiederman, and Lori A. Sansone, ‘The Prevalence of Borderline Personality Disorder Among Individuals with Obesity: A Critical Review of the Literature’, Eating Behaviors, 1 (2000), 93–104. Childhood emotional and verbal abuse has been identified as a relevant factor in the co-occurrence of personality disorders and binge eating; see CM. Grilo and R.M. Masheb, ‘Childhood Maltreatment and Personality Disorders in Adult Patients with Binge Eating Disorder’, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 106 (2002), 183–8; D.F. Williamson et al., ‘Body Weight and Obesity in Adults and Self-Reported Abuse in Childhood’, International Journal of Obesity, 26 (2002), 1075–82; D.J. Carlat, CA. Camargo Jr., and D.B. Herzog, ‘Eating Disorders in Males: A Report on 135 Patients’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 154 (1997), 1127–32; Christopher J. Russell and Pamela K. Keel, ‘Homosexuality as a Specific Risk Factor for Eating Disorders in Men’, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 31 (2002), 300–306; Sarah K. Murnen and Linda Smolak, ‘Femininity, Masculinity, and Disordered Eating: A Meta-Analytic Review’, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 22 (1997), 231–242; Caroline Meyer, Jackie Blisset, and Claire Oldfield, ‘Sexual Orientation and Eating Psychopathology: The Role of Masculinity and Femininity’, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 29 (2001), 314–18; and D. Blake Woodside et al., ‘Comparisons of Men with Full or Partial Eating Disorders, Men without Eating Disorders, and Women with Eating Disorders in the Community’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 158 (2001), 570–4.Google Scholar

27 CF. Telch et al., ‘Binge Eating Increases with Increasing Adiposity’, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1 (1988), 115–19.3.0.CO;2-W>CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 M.D. Levine and M.D. Marcus, ‘The Treatment of Binge Eating Disorder’, in Neurobiology in the Treatment of Ealing Disorders, ed. Hans Wijbrand Hoek, Janet L. Treasure and Melanie A. Katzman (Chichester, 1998), 363–81; Denise E. Wilfley, ‘Psychological Treatment of Binge Eating Disorder’, Eating Disorders and Obesity, 350–53; and Michael J. Devlin, ‘Pharmacological Treatment of Binge Eating Disorder’, ibid., 354–7.Google Scholar

29 Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment (44th edn New York, 2005), 959–64.Google Scholar

30 Percy Young, Handel (London, 1947; new edn 1967). William B. Ober, ‘Bach, Handel and “Chevalier” John Taylor, M.D. Ophthalmiater’, New York State Journal of Medicine, 69 (1969), 1797–1807. Milo Keynes, ‘Handel's Illnesses’, The Lancet, (20–7 December 1980), 1354–5.Google Scholar

31 Wilhelm Reinhard, ‘Ärztliches aus dem Leben Georg Friedrich Händeis zum 250. Geburtstage’, Die medizinische Welt, 9 (1935), 470–1.Google Scholar

32 Stefan Evers, ‘Zur Pathographie Händeis’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 40–1 (1994–5), 23–46; idem, ‘Georg Friedrich Handel's Strokes’, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 5 (1996), 274–81.Google Scholar

33 H. Bäzner and M. Hennerici, ‘Georg Friedrich Händel's Strokes’, Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists, ed. J. Bogousslavsky and F. Boller (Basel, 2005), 150–9. Regrettably, their analysis is flawed due to misinterpretation of evidence, the failure to review all extant data, and an unwillingness to consider alternative diagnoses.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 On the diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy see Poncelet, AnnNoelle, ‘An Algorithm for the Evaluation of Peripheral Neuropathy’, American Family Physician, 57 (15 February 1998), 755–65. She states that lead neuropathy ‘initially affects motor fibers in radial and peroneal distributions’, i.e., the nerves in the forearm and in the leg between the knee and ankle that control motion are usually the first to be affected.Google ScholarPubMed

35 William Frosch, ‘The “Case” of George Frideric Handel’, New England Journal of Medicine, 321 (1989), 765–9; idem, ‘Moods, Madness, and Music. II. Was Handel Insane?’ Musical Quarterly, 74 (1990), 31–56; idem, ‘Handel's Illness of 1737’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 40–1 (1994–5), 55–63 (at 62), in which Frosch appears to favor the saturnine gout diagnosis. Frosch dismisses Handel's obesity with the jocular comment that ‘As later portraits show, his well-known delight in the joys of the table resulted in a degree of corpulence'. Given that obesity is a common factor in the primary ailments Frosch identifies—arthritis and peripheral neuropathy—it is surprising that he is so cavalier.Google Scholar

36 Perazella, M.A., ‘Lead and the Kidney: Nephropathy, Hypertension and Gout’, Connecticut Medicine, 60 (1996), 521–6; Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment, 786.Google ScholarPubMed

37 Richard P. Wedeen, Poison in the Pot: The Legacy of Lead (Carbondale, 111., 1984). For the best of the recent surveys of the struggle against lead poisoning in the United States during the twentieth century see Warren, Christian, Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning (Baltimore, 2000). For the controversial hypothesis that widespread lead ingestion by the Roman elite played a significant role in the fall of the empire see Jerome O. Nriagu, Lead and Lead Poisoning in Antiquity (New York, 1983), and S.C. Gilfillan, Rome's Ruin by Lead Poison (Long Beach, 1990).Google Scholar

38 Arthur Aufderheide, ‘Lead Poisoning’, The Cambridge World History of Human Disease, ed. Kenneth F. Kiple (New York, 1993), 820–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Josef Eisinger, ‘Lead and Wine: Eberhard Gockel and the Colica Pictonum’, Medical History, 26 (1982), 279–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Bernardino Ramazzini, De morbis artificum diatriba (Mutins [Modena], 1700); idem, A Treatise of the Diseases of Tradesmen (London, 1705); a new translation A Dissertation on Endemial Diseases … Together with a Treatise on the Diseases of Tradesmen (London, 1746); 2nd edn as Health Preserved (London, 1750).Google Scholar

41 Goering, P.L., ‘Lead-protein Interactions as a Basis for Lead Toxicity’, Neurotoxicology 14 (1993), 45–60.Google ScholarPubMed

42 Iman A.S. Al-Saleh, ‘The Biochemical and Clinical Consequences of Lead Poisoning’, Medicinal Research Reviews, 14 (1994), 414–86.Google Scholar

43 Kehoe, R.A., ‘Occupational Lead Poisoning. 1–Clinical Types’, Journal of Occupational Medicine, 14 (1972), 298–300.Google ScholarPubMed

44 The relationship between high-fat diets and increased lead absorption has been shown in animal studies; see, e.g., John DeLuca et al., ‘The Effects of Dietary Fat and Lead Ingestion on Blood Lead Levels in Mice’, Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, 10 (1982), 441–7.Google Scholar

45 For the value and difficulty of the measurement of skeletal lead content see J.S. Handler et al., ‘Lead Contact and Poisoning in Barbados Slaves’, Social Science History, 10 (1986), 399–425; and Philippe Grandjean, ‘Ancient Skeletons as Silent Witnesses of Lead Exposures in the Past’, CRC Critical Reviews in Toxicology, 19 (1988), 11–21. See also Lorentz Wittmers Jr. et al., ‘Archeological Contributions of Skeletal Lead Analysis’, Accounts of Chemical Research, 35 (2002), 669–75. For the use of dental enamel analysis in measuring lead burden see P. Budd et al., ‘The Distribution of Lead within Ancient and Modern Human Teeth: Implications for Long-term and Historical Exposure Monitoring’, The Science of the Total Environment, 220 (1998), 121–36. For the application of the latest techniques of analysis of hair See Shamberger, R.J., ‘Validity of Hair Mineral Testing’, Biological Trace Element Research, 87 (2002), 1–28; and for cautions see Andrew Wilson et al., ‘Survival of Human Hair: The Impact of the Burial Environment’, Human Remain: Conservation. Retrieval and Analysis, ed. Emily Williams (Oxford, 2001), 119–27.Google Scholar

46 Teresa Lech, ‘Exhumation Examination to Confirm Suspicion of Fatal Lead Poisoning’, Forensic Science International, 158 (2006), 219–23.Google Scholar

47 For the analysis of Sir Isaac Newton's hair and its excessive lead content see P.E. Spargo and C.A. Pounds, ‘Newton's “Derangement of the Intellect”: New Light on an Old Problem’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 34 (1979), 11–32. For the analysis of Ludwig van Beethoven's hair and skull and discovery of excessive lead content see Martin, Russell, Beethoven's Hair (New York, 2000) and William Meredith, ‘The History of Beethoven's Skull Fragments’, Beethoven Journal, 20 (2005), 3–46.Google Scholar

48 For excessive arsenic and elevated lead levels in the hair of King George III see Timothy Cox et al., ‘King George III and Porphyria: an Elemental Hypothesis and Investigation’, The Lancet, 366 (2005), 332–5.Google Scholar

49 Gough, J.B., ‘Winecraft and Chemistry in 18th-Century France: Chaptal and the Invention of Chaptalization’, Technology and Culture, 39 (1998), 74–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

50 Eisinger, ‘Lead and Wine’, 288.Google Scholar

51 George Baker, ‘An Attempt Towards an Historical Account of that Species of Spasmodic Colic, Distinguished by the Name of the Colic of Poitou’, Medical Transactions of the College of Physicians of London, 1 (1768), 319–63; Gene V. Ball, ‘Two Epidemics of Gout’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 45 (1971), 401–8. A litre equals 2.1 U.S. pints or 1.76 imperial pints.Google Scholar

52 Even in the late twentieth century wine continued to be a source of lead poisoning; see, e.g., Gino Morisi et al., ‘Association of Selected Social, Environmental and Constitutional Factors to Blood Lead Levels in Men Aged 55–75 Years’, The Science of the Total Environment, 126 (1992), 209–29. An Argentine study concluded that heavy wine drinkers (>2 1/day) show a marked increase in blood lead; see CM. Lopez et al., ‘Alteration of Biochemical Parameters Related with Exposure to Lead in Heavy Alcohol Drinkers’, Pharmacological Research 45 (2002), 47–50.2+1/day)+show+a+marked+increase+in+blood+lead;+see+CM.+Lopez+et+al.,+‘Alteration+of+Biochemical+Parameters+Related+with+Exposure+to+Lead+in+Heavy+Alcohol+Drinkers’,+Pharmacological+Research+45+(2002),+47–50.>Google Scholar

53 Portuguese wines comprised between 53% and 76% of imports during the period 1717–77, while French wines amounted to only 2–6%. See Francis, A.D., The Wine Trade (London, 1972), 320. For graphic presentation of the quantities and types of wine imported into England between 1675 and 1860 see Banks, Fay, Wine Drinking in Oxford 1640–1850, British Archaeological Report 257 (Oxford, 1997), 18.Google Scholar

54 Cyrus Redding deplored the effect the Methuen Treaty and the monopoly company established to secure the trade had upon Portuguese wine and the drinking habits of the British. He considered the company's arguments for the addition of brandy—as necessary for preservation during transport and because the drinkers wanted strong wine—illogical and unproven. See his A History and Description of Modern Wines (2nd edn, London, 1836), 215–32. See also John Delaforce, The Factory House at Oporto (3rd edn, Bromley, 1990).Google Scholar

55 Francis, The Wine Trade, 320.Google Scholar

56 Eisinger, ‘Lead and Wine’, 287.Google Scholar

57 Al-Saleh, ‘The Biochemical and Clinical Consequences of Lead Poisoning’, 445.Google Scholar

58 Sloan, A.W., English Medicine in the Seventeenth Century (Bishop Auckland, 1996). Joan Lane, The Making of the English Patient: A Guide to Sources for the Social History of Medicine (Stroud, 2000).Google Scholar

59 Warner Chrouet, Le Connoissance des eaux minérales d'Aix-la-Chapelle, de Chaud-Fontaine, & de Spa (Leiden, 1714). The virtues of the ‘hot fountains’ at Aix had been extolled by Charles Perry in An Enquiry into the Nature and Principles of the Spaw Waters (London, 1734), which he dedicated to Hermann Boerhaave. Perry notes that drinking Aix waters is indicated ‘in pluretic and rheumatic Disorders, in which they not only palliate, and relieve the Effects; but oftentimes extirpate their Causes…. I cannot suppose them void of Use, even in the Gout’ (110). Of bathing and pumping on affected parts Perry writes that ‘very extraordinary Cures have been performed’ (at 112). A Compendium of Physic, and Surgery. For the Use of Young Practitioners (London, 1769); Rice Charleton, An Inquiry into the Efficacy of Bath Waters in Palsies (London, 1770). For an introduction to and bibliography of the disputatious literature about spas and their waters see Charles F. Mullett, Public Baths and Health in England, 16th–18lh Century, Supplement to the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 5 (Baltimore, 1946). For the development of spas in England see Hembry, Phyllis, The English Spa 1560–1815: A Social History (London, 1990).Google Scholar

60 Audrey Heywood, ‘A Trial of the Bath Waters: The Treatment of Lead Poisoning’, Medical History, suppl. 10 (1990), 82–101; another version published as ‘Lead, Gout and Bath Spa Therapy’, Hot Springs of Bath: Investigations of the Thermal Waters of the Avon Valley, ed. G.A. Kellaway (Bath, 1991), 77–88. ‘Work done in North America in the 1970s has shown that calcium and iron deficiency increases the amount of lead that is absorbed and retained by the body and increases the toxicity of that already in the body’; Heywood, ‘A Trial of the Bath Waters’, 101.Google Scholar

61 J.P. O'Hare et al., ‘Observations on the Effects of Immersion in Bath Spa Water’, British Medical Journal, 291 (21–8 December 1985), 1747–51.Google Scholar

62 Ibid.Google Scholar

63 Sylvia Mclntyre, ‘The Mineral Water Trade in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Transport History, n.s. 2 (1973), 1–19; Noel G. Coley, ‘Physicians and the Chemical Analysis of Mineral Waters in Eighteenth-Century England’, Medical History, 26 (1982), 123–44; Audrey Heywood et al., ‘Effect of Immersion on Urinary Lead Excretion’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 43 (1986), 713–15.Google Scholar

64 For Bath see Boyce, Benjamin, The Benevolent Man: A Life of Ralph Allen of Bath (Cambridge, 1967); Roger Rolls, The Hospital of the Nation: The Story of Spa Medicine and the Mineral Water Hospital at Bath (Bath, 1988); and Anne Borsay, Medicine and Charity in Georgian Bath: A Social History of the General Infirmary, c. 1739–1830 (Aldershot, 1999). For a clergyman's experience see Penrose, John, Letters from Bath 1766–67, ed. Brigitte Mitchell and Hubert Penrose (Gloucester, 1983).Google Scholar

65 Under no circumstances would John Wesley recommend opium, saying in his Primitive Physick, first published in 1747, ‘none should touch it if they have the least regard either for their souls or bodies’. See Bardell, EuniceBonow, ‘Primitive Physick: John Wesley's Receipts’, Pharmacy in History, 21 (1979), 111–21. One of the remedies Wesley recommended for colic, palsy, and rheumatism was drinking tar water, the product so enthusiastically endorsed by Bishop Berkeley. Another remedy for rheumatism was chewing rhubarb for two hours a day and swallowing the spittle. Wesley included a recipe of Hermann Boerhaave for relief of gout of the stomach. For the tar-water controversy see Benjamin, Marina, ‘Medicine, Morality and the Politics of Berkeley's Tar-Water’, The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Andrew Cunningham and Roger French (Cambridge, 1990), 165–93. For contemporary opinion see J. Worth Estes, ‘John Jones's Mysteries of Opium Reveal'd (1701): Key to Historical Opiates’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 34 (1979), 200–9; and John C. Kramer, ‘Opium Rampant: Medical Use, Misuse and Abuse in Britain and the West in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, British Journal of Addiction, 74 (1979), 377–89. Solid Panacea provided 3.3–13mg of morphine per dose, depending on body weight; see J. Worth Estes, Dictionary of Protopharmacology: Therapeutic Practices, 1700–1850 (Canton, Mass., 1990), 147. Opium was widely considered efficacious for fevers and ague (malaria) and thus its use among marshland people was high; see Mary J. Dobson, Contours of Death and Disease in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1997).Google ScholarPubMed

66 John Percival, Earl of Egmont, Diary of the First Earl of Egmont (London, 1921–23), 3:321.Google Scholar

67 Annette Landgraf, ‘Aachen und Burtscheid zu Händeis Zeit’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 50 (2004), 375–94.Google Scholar

68 Mainwaring, Memoirs, 123.Google Scholar

69 Alfred Mann, ‘An Unknown Detail of Handel Biography’, Bach, 25 (1994), 59–62.Google Scholar

70 For the charges levied in 1725 by the keeper of a bagnio near Piccadilly, See Keevil, J.J., ‘The Bagnio in London 1648–1725‘, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 7 (1952), 250–7.Google ScholarPubMed

71 Mainwaring, Memoirs, 121.Google Scholar

72 Mainwaring, Memoirs, 139.Google Scholar

73 Samuel Sharp, A Treatise on the Operations of Surgery (London, 1739), 160. By 1821 John Stevenson was able to distinguish between organic and functional amaurosis but the former was still ‘absolutely incurable’; On the Nature, Symptoms, and Treatment of the Different Species of Amaurosis, or Gutta Serena (London, 1821), 178.Google Scholar

74 Donald Blanchard, ‘George Handel and his Blindness’, Documenta Ophthalmologica, 99 (1999), 247–58.Google Scholar

75 Franz Hermann Franken, ‘Georg Friedrich Händeis Krankengeschichte aus heutiger Sicht’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 40–1 (1994–5), 47–53.Google Scholar

76 Paul G. Bahn, ‘Do Not Disturb? Archaeology and the Rights of the Dead’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 3 (1984), 127–139; Joan C. Callahan, ‘On Harming the Dead’, Ethics, 97 (1987), 341–52; Dorothy Nelkin and Lori Andrews, ‘Do the Dead Have Interests? Policy Issues for Research After Life’, American Journal of Law & Medicine, 24 (1998), 261–91; T. Thompson, ‘Legal and Ethical Considerations of Forensic Anthropological Research’, Science & Justice, 41 (2001), 261–270; Lori B. Andrews et al., ‘Constructing Ethical Guidelines for Biohistory’, Science, 304 (9 April 2004), 215–16; Antoon de Baets, ‘A Declaration of the Responsibilities of Present Generations toward Past Generations’, History and Theory, 43 (2004), 130–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 CM. Ingleby, Shakespeare's Bones (London, 1883; repr. Folcroft, Penn., 1974).Google Scholar

78 Rupert Bursell, ‘Digging Up Exhumation’, Ecclesiastical Law Journal, 5 (1998), 18–33; M.R. Russell Davies, The Law of Burial, Cremation and Exhumation (7th edn, Crayford, Kent, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Mark Hill, 'Chancellor Rules out Bosham Exhumation, 10 December 2003 <http//www.diochi.org.uk/news/031210-bosham.htm> (accessed 12 July 2006). (accessed 12 July 2006).' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Mark+Hill,+'Chancellor+Rules+out+Bosham+Exhumation,+10+December+2003++(accessed+12+July+2006).>Google Scholar

80 Martin, Beethoven's Hair, Meredith, ‘The History of Beethoven's Skull Fragments’; Christian Reiter, ‘The Causes of Beethoven's Death and His Locks of Hair: A Forensic-Toxicological Investigation’, Beethoven Journal, 22 (2007), 2–5.Google Scholar

81 See Hunter, David, ‘Miraculous Recovery? Handel's Illnesses, the Narrative Tradition of Heroic Strength, and the Oratorio Turn’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 3 (2006), 253–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar