VICE PRESENTS THE PEOPLE'S LISTS
Excerpted from The Book of Lists #3, by Amy Wallace, David Wallechinsky, and Irving Wallace
Primary source: Stephen Berger, Of Natural Causes: The Disease and Death of Just About Everybody. New York: Vantage Books, 1982
Illustrations by Laura Park
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ALFRED THE GREAT
(849–899)
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| As a very young man, King Alfred of Wessex expressed the wish that God would send him a disease that would suppress lust but would not deprive him of the ability to rule. Soon he became afflicted with hemorrhoids, and once, after a painful day out hunting on horseback, Alfred stopped at St. Neot’s shrine in Cornwall to pray for relief. |
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NIKOLAI GOGOL (1809–1852)
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| In 1831, the young Russian author wrote to his mother, “Suffering from hemorrhoids, I had the foolish idea that it was some other and more dangerous ailment. Later I learned that there was not one man in St. Petersburg free from this nuisance.” |
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| Lifelong overeating worsened his condition. |
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DAVID LIVINGSTONE
(1813–1873)
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| The African explorer and medical missionary suffered innumerable bouts of hemorrhoids. In 1864, he refused surgery to remove them because he feared he would be disabled and thus prevented from returning to Africa. Livingstone is the only famous person known to have died from hemorrhoids. |
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GERALD FORD
(1913–2006)
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| The 38th president of the US had always been athletic. Before earning his law degree at Yale University, he was a football and boxing coach there. But in later years, as hemorrhoids restricted his activities, Ford began finding less strenuous sports—such as golf—more to his liking. |
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TO BE CONTINUED
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