Royal Liver

From Vienna, Rome. Zurich and Paris five eminent medical specialists hustled last week to the Carpathian Mountain royal palace at Sinaia, Rumania. The patient awaiting them was Dowager Queen Marie, 61. From Vienna hustled famed Hans Eppinger, specialist in heart diseases. From Rome hustled Sir Aldo Castellani. Count of Chisimaio, specialist in yellow fever, dysentery, sleeping sickness and other tropical diseases (TIME. June 8, 1936). Other hustlers included a radiologist and a liver specialist. Soon from Professor Eppinger came the first definite announcement of what was the matter with Queen Marie, reported sick since last March. Marie of Rumania is suffering from a serious liver complaint following gastric hemorrhages and an attack of grippe. Announced Professor Eppinger:

"Her Majesty's condition is held to be serious, but not the occasion for immediate alarm. We have verified the former diagnosis and approved the present treatment." Whereupon the foreign specialists who were to receive as fees $1,250 each and expenses, departed.

Since Marie's latest physicians were scientists of unimpeachable integrity, their communique did much to explode one of the wildest palace yarns to emerge in Europe since the War. The illness of Queen Marie happened to precede the expulsion of slack-chinned former Prince Nicholas from the royal family and from Rumania. Bucharest gossips, who enjoy exercising the most heated imaginations in the world, were thus encouraged to circulate the following melodrama:

Final break between King Carol and his violent-tempered brother (who was once accused of kicking a taxi driver in the pit of the stomach) occurred at a family dinner party in Bucharest's Cotroceni Palace where King Carol was making one more effort to persuade Prince Nicholas to abandon his commoner wife, the former Mme Jana Lucia Deletj. Present at the dinner were Queen Mother Marie, Prince Nicholas, Crown Prince Mihai. When Carol proposed a toast to his own red-haired commoner friend, Magda Lupescu, 15-year-old Crown Prince Mihai dropped his champagne glass on the floor. Carol took a running kick at him. Nicholas intervened. A gun, supposedly Nicholas', went off. Queen Marie got a bullet in her middle, began to vomit blood.

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