Medical and mental health of Abraham Lincoln

The physical and mental health of Abraham Lincoln has been the subject of both contemporaneous commentary and subsequent hypotheses by historians and scholars.

Physical health

Despite the following occurrences, Lincoln's health up until middle age was fairly good for his day.[1][2]

Childhood

There were fears for young Lincoln's life during a 24-hour period of unconsciousness that followed a horse kicking him in the head. He was nine years old. On another occasion, he fell into a creek and almost drowned.[1]

Infectious disease

Trauma


Lincoln died from a bullet wound to the head in 1865. His other episodes of adult trauma were minor. He was clubbed on the head during a robbery attempt in 1828,[13] was struck by his wife (apparently on multiple occasions),[14] cut his hand with an axe at least once,[15] and incurred frostbite of his feet in 1830-1831.[16]

Body habitus

The shape ("habitus") of Lincoln's body attracted attention while he was alive, and continues to attract attention today among medical professionals.[17] Geneticists are now skeptical of the hypothesis that Marfan syndrome was the cause of his unusual habitus (see below).

Lincoln's unremarkable cardiovascular history and his normal visual acuity have been the chief objections to the theory, and today geneticists consider the diagnosis unlikely.[25]

Other

The theory that Lincoln was afflicted with type 5 spinocerebellar ataxia[29] is no longer accepted.[30] The theory that Lincoln's facial asymmetries were a manifestation of craniofacial microsomia[31] has been replaced with a diagnosis of left synostotic frontal plagiocephaly,[17] which is a type of craniosynostosis.

Mental health

Lincoln was contemporaneously described as suffering from "melancholy," a condition which modern mental health professionals would characterize as clinical depression.[32]

Lincoln suffered depression and hence avoided carrying sharp things, such as a knife, fearing he would use it on himself.

It was during his time as an Illinois legislator that Joshua Speed said Lincoln anonymously published a suicide poem in the Sangamo Journal; though he was not sure of the date, a suicide poem was published on August 25, 1838, making Lincoln 29 years of age. The poem is called The Suicide's Soliloquy; historians are still divided on whether or not Lincoln was the author.[33]

Whether he may have suffered from depression as a genetic predilection, as a reaction to multiple emotional traumas in his life,[34] or a combination thereof is the subject of much current conjecture.[35]

Lincoln suffered depressed mood after major traumatic events, such as the death of Ann Rutledge in August 1835,[36] the cessation of his (purported) engagement to Mary Todd Lincoln in January 1841 (after which several close associates feared Lincoln's suicide),[37] and after the Second Battle of Bull Run.[38] However, it is not clear that any of these episodes meet modern medical criteria for depression.[39]

Mary Lincoln felt her husband to be too trusting, and his melancholy tended to strike at times he was betrayed or unsupported by those in whom he put faith.[40]

Lincoln would often combat his melancholic moods by delving into works of humor, likely a healthy coping mechanism for his depression.[41]

It has been proposed that Lincoln took "blue mass" pills to improve his mood.[42] There is, however, no support for this in the written record.[43] (See "Medication" section, below.)

Medication

The recollections of Lincoln's legal colleagues (John Stuart, Henry Whitney, Ward Lamon, and William Herndon) all agree that Lincoln took blue mass pills because of constipation[44] (constipation is a troubling symptom in Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Type 2B, described above). The active ingredient of blue mass is elemental mercury – a substance now known to be a neurotoxin in its vaporic state.[45] Whether mercury poisoning may have affected Lincoln's demeanor before or after he ceased its use in 1861 is unknown, but still remains the subject of conjecture by some historians.[46] Lincoln's only known assessments of the medication are that it made him "cross" and that he preferred it above others.[47]

In 1865, speaking with the Washington correspondent of the Pittsburgh Chronicle, Mrs. Lincoln described an instance in which her husband's "usual medicine," the mercury based "blue pills" made him terribly ill. The correspondent recorded the interview as follows: Mrs. Lincoln "recalled the fact that her husband had been very ill, for several days, from the effects of a dose of blue pills taken shortly before his second inauguration." She said he was not well, and appearing to require his usual medicine, blue pills, she sent to the drug store in which Harrold was employed last and got a dose and gave them to him at night before going to bed, and that next morning his pallor terrified her. 'His face,' said she, pointing to the bed beside which she sat, 'was white as that pillow-case, as it lay just there,' she exclaimed, laying her hand on the pillow—'white, and such a deadly white; as he tried to rise he sank back again quite overcome!' She described his anxiety to be up, there was so much to do, and her persistence and his oppressive languor in keeping him in bed for several days; said he and she both thought it so strange that the pills should affect him in that way; they never had done so before, and both concluded they would get no more medicine there, as the attendant evidently did not understand making up prescriptions."[48]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Abraham Lincoln's Health". The Lincoln Institute. Retrieved 2009-10-12.
  2. Shutes, Milton H. (1957). Lincoln's Emotional Life. Dorrance & Company. p. 103. ASIN B001OKE1F0.
  3. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraphs 2001-2007.
  4. Sotos, "Sourcebook", pages 385-386.
  5. Sotos, "Sourcebook", pages 390-400.
  6. Hertz, Emanuel (ed.) (1938). The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon. Viking Press. p. 259.
  7. Merritt, H. Houston; et al. (1946). Neurosyphilis. Oxford University Press. p. 4.
  8. Douglas L. Wilson (2011). Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln. Random House Digital, Inc. pp. 129, 184.
  9. David Herbert Donald (2004). We Are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends. Simon and Schuster. p. 99.
  10. Goldman AS, Schmalstieg FC Jr. (2007). "Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg illness.". J Med Biogr. 15 (2): 104–110. doi:10.1258/j.jmb.2007.06-14. PMID 17551612.
  11. Sotos, "Sourcebook", pages 411-431.
  12. Bryner, Jeanna (2007-05-21). "Study: Abraham Lincoln Nearly Died From Smallpox in 1863". FoxNews.com. Retrieved 2009-10-13.
  13. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraph 3582.
  14. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraph 3589.
  15. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraph 1490.
  16. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraph 930.
  17. 1 2 Sotos, "The Physical Lincoln", pages 194-204.
  18. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraph 478.
  19. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraph 363.
  20. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraph 368.
  21. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraph 361.
  22. Sotos, "Sourcebook", paragraph 369.
  23. White, p. 108.
  24. Gordon, Abraham M. (March 1962). "Abraham Lincoln – a medical appraisal" (Free full text). Kentucky Medical Association 60 (60): 249–253. ISSN 0023-0294. PMID 13900423.
  25. Marion, Robert (1993). Was George Washington Really the Father of Our Country?: A Clinical Geneticist Looks at World History. Addison-Wesley. pp. 88–124. ISBN 978-0-201-62255-3. See also: Ready, Tinker (1999). "Access to presidential DNA denied". Nature Medicine 5 (859).
  26. Sotos, "The Physical Lincoln".
  27. Sotos JG (2012). "Abraham Lincoln's marfanoid mother: the earliest known case of multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B?". Clinical Dysmorphology 21 (3): 131–136. doi:10.1097/MCD.0b013e328353ae0c. PMID 22504423.
  28. "Scientist Wants to Test Abraham Lincoln's Bloodstained Pillow for Cancer". Discover Magazine. April 20, 2009. "Lincoln'd Shroud of Turin". Philadelphila Inquirer. April 13, 2009.
  29. Ikeda, Yoshio; et al. (Feb 2006). "Spectrin mutations cause spinocerebellar ataxia type 5". Nature Genetics 38 (2): 184–90. doi:10.1038/ng1728. ISSN 1061-4036. PMID 16429157. Lay summary University of Minnesota Medical Bulletin (Spring 2006).
  30. Sotos JG. (2009). "Abraham Lincoln did not have type 5 spinocerebellar ataxia.". Neurology 73 (16): 1328–1332. doi:10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181bd13c7. PMID 19841386.
  31. Fishman RS, Da Silveira A. (2007). "Lincoln's craniofacial microsomia: three-dimensional laser scanning of 2 Lincoln life masks.". Arch Ophthalmol. 125 (8): 1126–1130. doi:10.1001/archopht.125.8.1126. PMID 17698764.
  32. Shenk, Joshua Wolf (October 2005). "Lincoln's Great Depression". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
  33. Joshua Wolf Shenk (June 2004). "The Suicide Poem". The New Yorker.
  34. During his life Lincoln experienced the death of multiple close family members, including his mother, his sister, close confidant Ann Rutledge, and two of his sons, Eddie and Willie. Warren, Louis Austin (1959). : Lincoln's Youth: Indiana Years: Seven to Twenty-One. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press. p. 175. ISBN 978-0-87195-063-5.
  35. Donald, p. 27.
  36. Donald, p. 57.
  37. Donald, p. 88.
  38. Donald, p. 371.
  39. Sotos, "Physical Lincoln". pages 220-233.
  40. Schreiner, p. 154.
  41. Shenk, Joshua Wolf (2006) [2005]. Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 116. ISBN 978-0-618-77344-2.
  42. Hirschhorn N, Feldman RG, Greaves IA. (2001). "Abraham Lincoln's blue pills. Did our 16th president suffer from mercury poisoning?". Perspect Biol Med. 44 (3): 315–322. doi:10.1353/pbm.2001.0048. PMID 11482002.
  43. Sotos, "Physical Lincoln", pages 137-139.
  44. "Sourcebook". paragraphs 612-626.
  45. Hayden, p. 130.
  46. Mayell, Hillary (July 17, 2001). "Did Mercury in 'Little Blue Pills' Make Abraham Lincoln Erratic?". National Geographic News. Retrieved 2009-10-12.
  47. Wilson, DL (1998). "Herndon's Informants". University of Illinois Press. Retrieved 2010-09-22.
  48. California Digital Newspaper Collection – Late Atlantic Intelligence, Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 29, Number 4497, 21 August 1865

Bibliography

  • Donald, David Herbert (1996) [1995]. Lincoln. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-82535-9. 
  • Hayden, Deborah (2003). Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis. New York: Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-465-02881-8. 
  • Schreiner, Samuel Agnew (2005) [1987]. The Trials of Mrs. Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-9325-0. 
  • Sotos, John G. (2008). The Physical Lincoln. Mt. Vernon Book Systems. ISBN 978-0-9818193-2-7. 
  • Sotos, John G. (2008). The Physical Lincoln Sourcebook. Mt. Vernon Book Systems. ISBN 978-0-9818193-3-4.  Full-text index here.
  • White, Jr., Ronald C. (2009). A. Lincoln: A Biography. Random House, Inc. ISBN 978-1-4000-6499-1. 
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