HENRY VIII AND FOOTBALL HEAD INJURIES. I have posted several times, including here, about the increased recognition of the risks of head injuries in football. This article in the Daily Mail by Colin Fernandez reports on a new study to be published in the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience (senior author Arash Salardini, co-director of the Yale Memory Clinic) which says that the memory problems, explosive anger, inability to control impulses, headaches, insomnia and impotence that Henry suffered in the last years of his reign may have resulted from jousting injuries.
The Daily Mail article identifies two major jousting head injuries that Henry received. In addition to these, jousting would have resulted in many small injuries whose cumulative effect is now considered to be a possible cause of serious problems. Fernandez says:”The precise link between concussions and debilitating conditions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy is still being explored, but as the name suggests, repeated head injuries are a main culprit.”