MikeLigalig.com

let's face it, we all wish for, and pray for, the grace of a healthy and long life.  a look at giants of history (i.e., historical figures, which we aren't, yet ) and the causes of their deaths outside the battlefield may give us cautionary tales, if not the desire to whisper a morbid kind of gratitude.  a happy halloween to all!

for starters--

KING HENRY VIII
28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547; 56 years old

many of his symptoms, his leg ulcer, the strokes he suffered later in life, his wild mood swings, his progressive dementia, all point to severe uncontrolled diabetes.  another analysis is that his ulcerated legs were brought on possibly by deep vein thrombosis and what is theorized as cushings syndrome, a horrible disease that affects body fat and bones.  and he suffered from morbid obesity later in life, which is directly related to diabetes.  his six wives had nothing to do with his health despite his having to do with the deaths of some of them, by beheading.  and definitely he had no syphillis.


Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=33585.0

AL CAPONE


Capone's control and interests within organized crime diminished rapidly after his imprisonment, and he was no longer able to run the Outfit after his release. He had lose weight, and his physical and mental health deteriorated under the effects of neurosyphilis.

On January 21, 1947, Capone had a stroke. He regained consciousness and started to improve but contracted pneumonia on January 24. He suffered a fatal cardiac arrest the next day.

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=33585.0

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL 
30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965; 90 years old

churchill suffered a stroke and gradually slipped into a deep sleep from which he never awakened.  he died 15 days later.  he also suffered from an injured back after a fall four years earlier.


Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=33585.0

Great thread!!!

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=33585.0

VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN
22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924; 54 years old



lenin suffered three major strokes before his death.   he suffered from insomnia, headaches, and other ailments that could have been attributed to stress.  however, when his speech began to show signs of impairment and his memory started to fail, those closest to lenin began to suspect that something was seriously wrong.  while some surmised that lenin was being poisoned by the lead in the bullets that remained in his body after an assassination attempt, the real cause of his illness was stroke.

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=33585.0

ALEXANDER THE GREAT
(356-323 BC)


[from the Alexander Mosaic, Pompeii]

Alexander the Great died in late spring in the semi-tropical, urban area of present-day Baghdad. Explanations for his death have included poisoning, enteric and parasitic diseases, influenza, and poliomyelitis. Our diagnosis, as well as previous alternative diagnoses, may be subject to author bias, errors in translation, and a paucity of clinical information. We assumed that he died in late spring in Babylon after a 2-week illness that included fever and signs suggestive of encephalitis. We presumed that diseases now endemic to Iraq were also present in ancient Mesopotamia. Recent scholarly thought has been ingenious and rigorous, given the sparseness of available information. Nonetheless, earlier diagnoses did not include West Nile virus encephalitis. Previous considerations omitted an event that was carefully recorded by Plutarch and which, before 1999, might have been considered irrelevant: the erratic behavior and observable deaths of numerous ravens outside the walls of Babylon. This observation might now be construed as an important clue. If this observation is included as part of the description of Alexander’s illness, West Nile virus encephalitis complicated by flaccid paralysis becomes an alternative diagnosis. It is possible that, in the 3rd century BC, disease caused by West Nile virus arrived in Mesopotamia for the first time in recorded history, killing indigenous birds and an occasional human and causing only incidental febrile illnesses in many others. Over subsequent centuries the virus may have devolved, becoming less pathogenic for indigenous birds, while retaining its potential as a dangerous human pathogen. This is speculative, but in 1999, a “natural experiment” did occur when an Old World epizootic strain was introduced into the United States. What has been observed in the ongoing North American epizootic and epidemic might be similar to what happened in Babylon many years ago. We now know that unexplained bird die-offs can presage human cases of disease caused by West Nile virus. In 323 BC, a similar event might have been considered an omen of Alexander the Great’s death. In this instance, the oracles would have been correct.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol9no12/03-0288.htm

Among many other interesting reads, you may wish to check the following:

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/alexanderdeath.htm
http://www.grahamphillips.net/Alexander/Alexander_2.htm



Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=33585.0

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
(August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831)



Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.

Hegel developed a comprehensive philosophical framework, or "system", to account in an integrated and developmental way for the relation of mind and nature, the subject and object of knowledge, and psychology, the state, history, art, religion and philosophy. In particular, he developed a concept of mind or spirit that manifested itself in a set of contradictions and oppositions that it ultimately integrated and united, without eliminating either pole or reducing one to the other. Examples of such contradictions include those between nature and freedom, and between immanence and transcendence.

In previous modern accounts of Hegelianism (to undergraduate classes, for example), especially those formed prior to the Hegel renaissance, Hegel's dialectic was most often characterized as a three-step process, "thesis, antithesis, synthesis"; namely, that a "thesis" (e.g. the French Revolution) would cause the creation of its "antithesis" (e.g. the Reign of Terror that followed), and would eventually result in a "synthesis" (e.g. the Constitutional state of free citizens). However, Hegel used this classification only once, and he attributed the terminology to Immanuel Kant. The terminology was largely developed earlier by Johann Fichte.

Hegel was appointed Rector of the University in 1830, when he was 60. He was deeply disturbed by the riots for reform in Berlin in that year. In 1831 Frederick William III decorated him for his service to the Prussian state. In August 1831 a cholera epidemic reached Berlin and Hegel left the city, taking up lodgings in Kreuzberg. Now in a weak state of health, Hegel went out little. As the new semester began in October, Hegel returned to Berlin, with the (mistaken) impression that the epidemic had largely subsided. By November 14 Hegel was dead. The physicians pronounced the cause of death as cholera, but it is likely he died from a different gastrointestinal disease.

--from Wikipedia


Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=33585.0