Struensee was thus shaped by his religious family’s outsider status in Germany. Through a fluky series of circumstances, Struensee got to try out his Enlightenment ideas on a large scale. As physician to King Christian VII of Denmark, he became regent of Denmark when the king’s life-long mental illness grew extreme enough to create a power vacuum. Struensee’s dramatic social reforms included universal health care, limits on the totalitarian power of the Church, abolishing torture, removing censorship of the press, revoking privileges for nobles, introducing luxury taxes to fund the care of
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