Bang was not optimistic about the possibility of “removing the causes.”
It was true that quacks offered a great many “arcane remedies”—secret po-
tions with miraculous powers—and others recommended going to “the
place of execution and drinking the blood of an executed person” but, as
Bang explained, “the psychological impression they make is probably the
source of their effectiveness.” Bang was himself a clinician and mentioned
a number of medications including “large doses ofrad. valerianæ[Latin: ‘va-
lerian root’]” to be ingested between “i–iii [times] daily in powdered form
or as an infusion.”
Bang was also aware that epilepsy was not associated exclusively with
things that were abominable, though in his view, there was no connection
between intellectual makeup and epilepsy: “It is most likely a matter of
chance that many world-famous men have been epileptics.”
We wonder whether Bang had had one of these men sitting in his office
without suspecting it. Or had he actually known very well what was going
on? At any rate, in the early part of October 1855, when Kierkegaard turned
up at Royal Frederik’s Hospital and asked to be examined, he had a particu-
lar medication in his blood: “Rad. valerianæ.”
romina
(Romina)
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