Became known cause of psychological disorders wife Lincoln

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Стала известна причина психологических расстройств жены ЛинкольнаScientists have discovered why the wife of Lincoln was crazy.

Hallucinations, delusions and paranoia wife of US President Abraham Lincoln has aroused the hostility of contemporaries and historians – could be caused by a vitamin B12 deficiency.

This condition is treated with multi-vitamin pills. About a new hypothesis is reported in the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, and briefly about it tells The Washington Post.

John SOTOS (John G. Sotos, a cardiologist from California, has suggested that Mary Todd Lincoln suffered from progressive B12-deficient (pernicious) anaemia. “This diagnosis explains her behavior as first lady and widow)”, – says the scientist. The disease starts with autoimmune lesions of the stomach: this organ ceases to produce substances, allowing you to obtain vitamin B12 from food. However, symptoms of anemia occur in a few years when the exhausted reserves of the vitamin in the body.

Why Mary Lincoln became ill with pernicious anemia is still unknown. “She was probably predisposed to it genetically. There are theories that autoimmune gastritis caused by the same bacteria that ulcer of the stomach,” said SOTOS. The symptoms noted by the physician wife of Lincoln (headache, fatigue, palpitations, increasing weakness, tingling of the skin), correspond to the deficiency of vitamin B-12.

Her irritability, seizures, delirium and auditory hallucinations are stacked in the same clinical picture. “She was just a woman whose biochemically exhausted brain could not cope with endured its share of turmoil,” said SOTOS.

Mary Todd and aspiring politician Abraham Lincoln were married in 1842. Their second child died in 1850, and the third in 1862, the fourth in 1871-m (no one lived to 19 years). The death of Billy Lincoln in 1862, made my mother be laid up in bed for many months and organize a seance in the White house. In addition, she brought her husband with scenes of jealousy (requiring, for example, to dismiss the General, whose wife was riding his horse during a military parade followed by Lincoln).

After her husband’s assassination and the death of the youngest son (in 1871) the mental state of Mary deteriorated. In 1875 she had even placed for three months in a madhouse. But then it was released, and until his death in 1882, she lived with her sister in Springfield.

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