~ MEDICINE ~

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from Restoration (Miramax Films) Merivel the Physician King: Something has arrived, Merivel, something that may arouse even you from sleep. It's the Plague, 'la Peste'... Some of us will be spared and some will die, but all of us will AWAKE!" (Audio Clip WAV 239 KB) Quarantine Merivel: They come in bleeding, broken, suffering, stinking -- every color of disease, green being the most disgusting, and I am revolted. I am frightened. Father: Of what? Merivel: Their faith and my ignorance. Father: Take the hand of your friend Pearce, Robert. He is the example to follow. He may dress like a crow, but he once infected himself with Scarlet Fever, the better to study the disease. (Audio Clip WAV 364 KB) Autopsy at Royal College Hospital King: Someone very close to me is dying. Someone without whom I cannot live. My doctors have bled her repeatedly, tried without success lesions, emetics, and purges, shaved the hair off her body in order to cup her, but she does not rally. Merivel and Margaret Pearce: What I do remember is how I witnessed the beating heart. Merivel: Yes, I remember. Pearce: You put your hand in and touched it, but I could not. Merivel: I remember. Pearce: And the other man felt nothing. Pray for me that I become that man and feel no pain. Merivel Holds the Beating Heart Pearce: Madness is a brother and sister to Misfortune. Poverty and Abandonment are prime causes. The Mad Dance Around the Tree Merivel: For all our inmates, there was a time before, when there was no madness in them . We should try to ask each one of those in our care to try to remember how it was to be in the time before, and to return on that...and in this way we might discover the imprint of the steps to madness. There, just under the surface, there can be cures by dancing and laughter... ...But you cannot banish joy, for that is the road to madness. (Audio Clip WAV 839 KB)

Additional Internet Resources A General Study of the Plague in England 1539-1640 With a Specific Reference to Loughborough, by Ian Jessiman. Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Europe An ambitious project aiming to document the arrival, impact and response to epidemic disease in Western Europe. Although the current onsite material dates from three centuries prior to the Restoration Period, the tragic accounts are timeless. One image of blood transfusion and two of blood circulation, circa 1639, presented by the The Franklin Institute Science Museum as part of their online exhibit "The Heart: A Virtual Exploration" Milestones in Cardiology William Harvey, the medical mentor of Restoration's Merivel and Pearce, is honored here by The Franklin Institute Science Museum for his first description of blood circulation in 1628. Oath of Hippocrates 1995 Restatement of the Oath of Hippocrates (Circa 400 B.C.) Cesarian Section-- A Brief History An online exhibit from the US National Library of Medicine History of Medicine Division. With .gifs from plates including one circa 1666 (GIF 191 K). A Brief History of the Basal Ganglia Notes the identifications by the English anatomist Thomas Willis of distinct subcortical structures in 1664. Medieval Botanica: Mythical Plants of the Middle Ages by James L. Matterer In Restoration, doctors use knowledge of real plants to comfort and cure their patients; this paper, by contrast, looks at Medieval beliefs in plants that never existed. Visits to Bedlam A collection of illustrative text excerpts maintained by Jack Lynch at the University of Pennsylvania. Vincent van Gogh: The Asylum Although these paintings were not created until 1889, van Gogh's subject of the tree in the asylum garden is also a major symbol in Miramax's Restoration.