THE CRAZY ROMANOFFS. A Disease Which Afflicts the Russian Imperial Family.
In* the recently published memoirs of Count Vitzthum of Eckstadl, proofs are given ot the heieditary character of the mental diseases which afflicted the imperial family of Russia. All the sons of Czar Paul I , like that unhappy monarch himself, who was murdered in 1801, became subjects to fits of insanity. Paul I. had four sonsCzar Alexander I. the Grand Duke Constantine, Czar Nicolas 1 and the Grand duke Michael. Every one of them after his fortyfifth year exhibited undoubted signs of mental derangement. This was not fully discovered in' the ease of Nicolas I, until after the Czar's death. An English physician, however, the Count frays, noticed the appearance of the hereditary disea&o in the Czar as early as July, 1853, and he then predicted that the monarch had not more than two years of life befoic him. This he stated in a letter to Lord Pahncrston. The Emperor Nicolas died in March, 18S5, about four months earlier than the date predicted. The Count appears to have- no doubt chat the Crimean war, so far as it depended on Nicolas, was the rash act of a ruler "whose mental cquipose was disturbed.'* None of the four sons of Paul I. lived to be 60 yeais of age, and every one of them suffered from concussion of the brain after reaching his fortyfifth year. Alexander died at 48, a miserable man, moody and despondent, as Prince Metiernich has painted him, " tired of existence.'" His brother, the Grand Duke Constantino, though not manifestly insane, gave frequent signs of mental disturbance, of which he was himself so plainly conscious that he did not think himself fit to be trusted with the reins of government. IFis conduct in the year 1830, at the outbieak of the revolution in Warsaw, will remains to prove his mental unsoundness. He had to be intrusted to the care of his wife, the Princess Lowiez, who was cautioned the same way as if a physician in charge of a patient having intermittent fits of insanity. He died in his fifty-second \ear fiom congestion of the brain. The Grand Duke Michael was killed by a fall from his horse at the age of 48. Some years before his death he had exhibited signs of undoubted mental disease, and his physicians declared that he was on the road to certain insanity. The events of 1848-52 were not calculated to allay the hereditary dispositions of the imperial family of Russia, but to excite and intensify them. There is something terrible in the contrast between the outward position of the Czar Nicolas. upon the bent of whose will the fate of millions in Europe Avas depending, and the alleged diseased iziwaid condition ot his tnind.
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Te Aroha News, 26 November 1887, Page 3
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464THE CRAZY ROMANOFFS. A Disease Which Afflicts the Russian Imperial Family. Te Aroha News, 26 November 1887, Page 3
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