Historical consequences of the infertility of Otto (1815-67) and Amelia (1818-75), first Royal couple of Greece

After the Greek Independence (1830), the first King, Otto from the Wittelsbach dynasty (Bayer), was married to Amelia from the House of Oldenburg (1836). Their failure to produce an heir to the throne, eagerly expected by the people, contributed much to their abdication in 1862, as an additional factor at the general, opposition to their way of governing. The responsibility for the couples sterility became a matter of political controversies among their families, their countries and the other European thrones after the unsuccessful medical diagnoses and treatments of the most eminent Greek and German physicians. This paper examines their failure to continue the throne, the medical circumstances, and the historical and political consequences

Lord Byron's first voyage in Greece (1810) and the neglected case of malaria

The aim of our report is to present the case of the illness which probably affected Lord Byron's health for the rest of his life. We present three letters of the famous British poet and fighter of the Greek Revolution in 1821, which were sent between 25 September and 3 October 1810. These letters are associated with Byron's illness during his excursion in the ancient monuments of Peloponnese. Lord Byron describes his clinical features with an irregular fever close to malaria but the identification of Plasmodium spp is difficult. According to the environmental conditions and the endemicity of the area, the hypothesis of a mixed species malaria cannot be excluded