An Early Childhood Illness of Ivan the Terrible: Scrofula or Tuberculosis? Chronic or Healed?

This essay analyzes the correspondence between Grand Prince Vasilii III and his wife Elena (née Glinskaia). Only Vasilii III's part of this correspondence, consisting of five letters, has been preserved. All five letters reveal the grand prince's great concern for his family's health; and in particular, the letters describe an early childhood disease of the grand prince's eldest son Ivan, the future Ivan IV (the Terrible). In an earlier analysis (in 1993) of the grand prince's description of this illness found in these letters, Edward Keenan argued that the young boy likely suffered from tuberculosis or scrofula. In this essay, I reexamine the grand prince's description of his son's illness and argue against a pathologization of Ivan's whole life based only on second-hand descriptions of a childhood illness by his father. From the letters themselves, as well as from contemporary physicians' descriptions, there can be no certainty that the illness was ever anything more than an early childhood disease that passed, with no effect upon the later life of Tsar Ivan IV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]