Shattered. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Lebe. And this is Ghost Town.

King Charles, the 6th, ruler of France from 1380 to 1422, was known to be touched with a unique kind of madness.

He dressed in special reinforced clothing and forbid courtiers to come close to him, for fear of shattering at their touch.

The king would suffer from wild,

destructive rages for the rest of his life, but his conviction that he was made of glass was the first and most unique case of a strange psychological condition that would crop up for centuries. Today on Ghost Town, the glass delusion.

Though he was arguably the most high-profile case, King Charles was far from being alone in his

staunch belief that he was made of glass. The, quote, glassmen, as they were called,

appeared throughout Europe between the 15th and 17th centuries.

In the literary and medical texts of the time, tales of people afflicted with glass bones,

glass heads, glass arms, and glass hearts were fairly commonplace. According to a J-Store

daily piece by Amelia Soth, one man, according to one journal,

was convinced his buttocks was made of glass, and that sitting down would smash it into

flying shards. He was afraid to leave the house in case a glazer tried to melt him down into a

window pane. According to researcher Gil speak, two 16th century doctors, Alfonso Ponce de Santa Cruz,

the physician to Philip I of Spain, and André de Laurent's, physician to Henry

the fourth of France, told the story of an unnamed royal who believed he was literally a glass vase. A history.com

article about the glass delusion by historian Hadley Mears says, quote, the royal spent much of his time

lying on a bed of straw to protect himself. Fed up, the man's physician ordered that his bed

of straw be set on fire and that the door to the man's

room be locked. When the man began to beat on the door begging for help, the doctor asked him

why he wasn't shattering despite the violent movements. The ploy worked. According to Ph.D. candidate

Elena Fabietti, the royals said, quote, open, I am begging you, my friends and dearest servants.

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