Many thanks to Sylvia Barbara Soberton for sending me such an interesting post! Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did, and that you give her new book on the health of the Tudor monarchs a look 
Did Henry VIII suffer from venereal disease or a urinary tract infection?
The theory, first put forward in 1888, that Henry VIII suffered from syphilis, has long been disproved by historians because the King didn’t display symptoms of this disease, wasn’t treated with the customary mercury and his children didn’t display symptoms of congenital syphilis. However, a manuscript preserved in the British Library entitled Dr Butts’ Diary shows that even if Henry VIII didn’t suffer from syphilis, he was afflicted by some other disease of venereal origin or possibly suffered from a urinary tract infection.
MS Sloane 1047, the recently digitised manuscript currently preserved in the British Library, is a pharmacopoeia of plasters, lotions, waters, ointments, poultices and unguents compiled by royal physicians, with recipes devised by Henry VIII himself. Among the remedies devised by Henry there are curious references to two medicines for the royal penis: “an ointment devised by the King’s Majesty at Cawood, to dry excoriations and comfort the member, called the sweet ointment” and “the King’s Grace’s ointment made at St James to cool and dry, and comfort the member”. One of the King’s physicians, Dr Walter Cromer, devised a plaster “to cease pain, and to delay heat, and to comfort the member.” A plaster made by Doctors Chambers, Butts, Augustine and Cromer was to “resolve humours, and to cease pain, and to comfort the member”. The manuscript dates from the late 1530s, when the ulcers covering the King’s legs began causing serious trouble, such as pain and gathering of the fluids. A reference to Anne of Cleves, for whom a plaster to “mollify, and resolve, comfort and cease pain of cold and windy causes” was devised, allows us to put forward the theory that it dates from 1539-40. The many references to the King’s painful ulcers further strengthen the notion that the manuscript entries started in the late 1530s.
A serious accident at the tiltyard in 1536 spelled the end of Henry VIII’s jousting career and marked the beginning of serious issues with his legs. The King’s legs had a tendency to swell, and they were covered in fistulas. In 1538, one of the fistulas closed up, and Henry remained speechless for almost two weeks, “black in the face and in great danger”. It got worse as the King grew older and stouter.
It is also often overlooked that at least one of Henry’s contemporaries believed he may have suffered from syphilis, and the King used medicine that was believed to be effective in curing this disease. George Constantine was an evangelical priest and former member of the household of Sir Henry Norris, who was executed alongside Anne Boleyn in 1536. In his 1539 written report of his conversation with Thomas Barlow, Dean of Westbury, Constantine wondered whether the King’s “sore leg” could be treated with “guaiacum”. Guaiacum is known by many names, including lignum guaiacum, guaiac wood, guaiac resin, lignum vitae, and pockwood. The guaiac was imported to Europe from India in 1508 and began being used in the treatment of syphilis in Italy in 1517. In 1519, guaiacum wood was praised as a treatment of syphilis by German nobleman Ulrich von Hutten, who eventually died of the disease. In fact, guaiacum was more popular than mercury as a cure for syphilis at the time, “becoming the remedy of physicians and their wealthy clients, while mercury remained the remedy of the poor”.
But to suggest that Henry VIII suffered from syphilis bordered on treason, and the dean with whom Constantine conferred about it replied: “But ye durst [dare] not.” Constantine replied: “By God but I durst. What made it any matter for my life or twenty thousand such for the preservation of his life?” The dean suggested that Constantine should talk about it with the King’s physician, Dr Butts, but Constantine said that “he forgot, and moreover, the physicians would not meddle with it, because none of the old authors wrote of it”. Furthermore, it would have been advisable first to find “someone of the King’s complexion that had a sore leg, and prove the effect on him”. Perhaps the King heard about George Constantine’s suggestion of using guaiacum after all since he devised for himself a plaster “to heal ulcers without pain, made with pearl and the wood of ligni guaiaci [lignum vitae].” In this case, the guaiacum was used for the King’s ulcerated legs.
