In April 27, 1774, Louis XV of France, then aged 64, felt a
little unwell. His head hurt and he felt stiff.
Nonetheless, an avid hunter, he decided to go out hunting. Still unwell
in the evening he skipped his supper; since he was still ill the next day his
doctor ordered that he be transferred from his little palace in Trianon, where
he was relaxing with his mistress and some friends, to his bedchamber in
Versailles.
The King, still feeling bad, was bled. His doctors
surrounded him – and finally, he was diagnosed. “While giving him a drink, red
spots were observed on his face. “Bring the candle closer, the King does not
see his glass,” said a doctor, standing near by with his colleagues. Everyone
recognized the symptoms of smallpox.”
Th
The royal family was kept away, to protect the non-immune heirs
against infection. In spite of not being inoculated and not having had the
disease, his middle-aged daughters tended him during the day and his youthful
mistress, Madame Du Barry, tended him during the night (not at the same time,
since the Princesses refused to share the space with the mistress, and she
tactfully avoided their presence).
The fever and headaches continued and intensified, and the
King’s body was covered in pustules. His head appeared “fort grosse et rouge” –
very fat and red. On May 3, the King looked at his hands and realized what he
had – smallpox. Frightened for his soul, he asked his mistress, in tears, to
leave him the next day.
On May 7, the King called his confessor. In addition to the private
confession, the Cardinal de La Roche-Aymon announced in his name that the King
“asks forgiveness from God for offending
him and for scandalizing his people” and promises to reform if he heals.
The crisis point came on May 8, and after that, the King’s
fever rose dramatically. He became delirious and suppuration (discharge of pus)
slowed down. On May 9 the pustules were dry and turned black. Pustules and
scabs in his throat prevented him from swallowing. His face looked like “a
bronze mask with a gaping mouth,” his head black and swollen. The smell was
unbearable. His final agony lasted from 11am to 3:15 PM.
That was how Louis XV fell victim to the small pox, a
disease that had a 30% mortality rate https://docsimmunize.org/immunize/cdcmanual/original/smallpox.pdf.
Soon after his death, his three grandson, led by the new King, Louis XVI,
followed the example of the British royal family and inoculated
themselves, a process in which the
patient was scratched and material from a smallpox lesion put on the
wound. Not the safest process. Luckily,
in 1796 Edward Jenner invented the first vaccine, the vaccine against smallpox,
a much safer procedure (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/).
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Simone Bertierre, Marie-Antoinette L’insoumise (2002).
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