Last Moments of Lord ByronThe ExaminerFrancesco Bruno Markup and editing by David Hill Radcliffe Completed April 2009 FrBruno.1824 Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities Virginia Tech
Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
License
Lord Byron and his Times: http://lordbyron.org
Last Moments of Lord ByronThe ExaminerFrancesco BrunoLondon22 August 1824864530
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Obvious and unambiguous compositors’ errors have been silently corrected.
NINES categories for Genre and Material Form at
http://www.performantsoftware.com/nines_wiki/index.php/Submitting_RDF#.3Cnines:genre.3E on
2009-02-26BibliographyBook HistoryCollectionCriticismDramaEphemeraFictionHumorLawLettersLife WritingHistoryManuscriptNonfictionPeriodicalPoliticsReference WorksPoetryReligionReviewTranslationTravel
THE EXAMINER.No. 864. SUNDAY, AUG. 22, 1824. LAST MOMENTS OF LORD BYRON.
Dr. Bruno has sent us the
following contradiction of portions of the statement we copied last Sunday from the Westminster Review,
respecting the medical treatment of Lord Byron, as the Review itself cannot notice Dr. Bruno's statement
for three months—and, as we contributed to the circulation of the particulars which he
denies or explains, we think ourselves bound to give it immediate insertion; and we shall be
equally open to any further statements on the subject, either from the Editor of the Westminster Review or form his avowed informant,
Mr. Fletcher. We translate the Doctor's French:—
ANSWER TO THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW; RESPECTING THE LAST MOMENTS OF LORD BYRON.
Mr. Fletcher has omitted to state, that on the second day of
Lord Byron’s illness, his physician, Dr.
Bruno, seeing the sudorific medicines had no effect, proposed blood-letting, and
that his Lordship refused to allow it, and caused Mr.
Millingen to be sent for, in order to consult with his physician, and see if the
rheumatic fever could not be cured without the loss of blood.
Mr. Millingen approved of the medicines previously
prescribed by Dr. Bruno, and was not opposed to the opinion
that bleeding was necessary; but he said to his Lordship that it might be deferred till the
next day. He held this language for three successive days, while the other physician
(Dr. Bruno) every day threatened Lord
Byron that he would die by his obstinacy in not allowing himself to be bled. His
Lordship always answered, “You wish to get the reputation of curing my
disease,—that is why you tell me it is so serious; but I will not permit you to bleed
me.”
After the first consultation with Mr.
Millingen, the domestic Fletcher asked
Dr. Bruno how his Lordship’s complaint was going
on? The physician replied that, if he would allow the bleeding, he would be cured in a few
days. But the surgeon, Mr. Millingen, assured Lord
Byron, from day to day, that it could wait till to-morrow; and thus four days
slipped away, during which the disease, for want of blood-letting, grew much worse. At length
Mr. Millingen, seeing that the prognostications which Dr.
Bruno had made respecting Lord Byron’s malady were
more and more confirmed, urged the necessity of bleeding, and of no longer delaying it a
moment. This caused Lord Byron, disgusted at finding that he could not be
cured without loss of blood, to say that it seemed to him that the doctors did not understand
his malady. He then had a man sent to Zante to fetch Dr.
Thomas. Mr. Fletcher having mentioned this to Dr.
Bruno, the latter observed, that if his Lordship would consent to lose as much
blood as was necessary, he would answer for his cure; but that if he delayed any longer, or did
not entirely follow his advice, Dr. Thomas would not arrive in
time:—in fact, when Dr. T. was ready to set out from Zante,
Lord Byron was dead.
The pistols and stiletto were removed from his Lordship’s bed,—not
by Fletcher, but by the servant Tita, who was the only person that constantly waited on Lord
Byron in his illness, and who had been advised to take this precaution by
Dr. Bruno, the latter having perceived that my Lord had
moments of delirium.
Two days before the death, a consultation was held with three other doctors,
who appeared to think that his Lordship’s disease was changing from inflammatory
diathesis to languid, and they ordered china*, opium, and ammonia.
Dr. Bruno opposed this with the greatest warmth, and pointed
out to them that the symptoms were those, not of an alteration in the disease, but of a
fever flying to the brain, which was violently attacked by it; and that the wine, the china,
and the stimulants would kill Lord Byron more speedily than
the complaint itself could; while, on the other hand, by copious bleedings and the medicines
that had been taken before, he might yet be saved. The other physicians, however, were of a
different opinion; and it was then that Dr. Bruno declared to his
colleagues that he would have no further responsibility for the loss of Lord
Byron, which he pronounced inevitable if the china were given him. In effect,
after my Lord had taken the tincture, with some grains of carbonate of ammonia, he was seized
by convulsions. Soon afterwards they gave him a cup of very strong decoction of china, with
some drops of laudanum: he instantly fell into a deep lethargic sleep, from which he never
rose.
The opening of the body discovered the brain in a state of the highest
inflammation; and all the six physicians who were present at that opening were convinced that
my Lord would have been saved by the bleeding, which his physician Dr.
Bruno had advised from the beginning with the most pressing urgency and the
greatest firmness.
F. B.
* This is a French term, sometimes used for the smilax china; but we
have no doubt it means here the Jesuit’s bark.