BMJ  2007;335:777 (13 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.39364.461736.94

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Between the lines

A foolish, fond old man

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What was King Lear's diagnosis? There are two problems: firstly, he was a fictional character, and secondly, he is not available for tests or examination (a problem besetting all pathographers, though it also affords them infinite scope for pleasant speculation). So, screeds have been written in the last two centuries, but we are no nearer the truth—because there is no truth to come nearer to.

Let that not detain us. If we argued only about those matters that had a potentially definitive answer we should become boringly rational. Was Lear, then, demented, and if so was the dementia of the Alzheimer's, Lewy body, or multi-infarct type? (His variable mental states suggests the second or third.) Or was he depressed, perhaps as the result of an unresolved grief reaction to the death of his wife, mother of his three daughters? This doesn't seem likely, since he hardly mentions her, perhaps because . . . [Full text of this article]

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