Vice-Chancellor’s Esteem Lectures

Royal diseases: Medical mysteries of Queen Victoria’s haemophilia and King George III’s madness

Professor Martin Warren, School of Biosciences

Date: 11 March 2015
Time: 6pm
Location: Grimond Lecture Theatre 1

In a collaboration between history and science, which combines historical records of illness and suffering with the latest advances in forensic technology, we have been able to trace an extraordinary and fascinating detective story involving two separate yet debilitating diseases that have been associated with the royal families of Europe. Did King George III suffer with a rare inherited and incurable blood disorder called porphyria? Why did it affect him at a relatively late age and could it have been passed onto his descendants? We all know that Queen Victoria was a carrier for haemophilia, which was passed into the Russian royal family with disastrous consequences. But from where was the faulty gene inherited given that there was little evidence of haemophilia previously in the family? These questions and other will be answered as we look at DNA evidence that takes us back to Anne of Bohemia.