“What an Affliction”: Mary Todd Lincoln’s Fatal Pernicious Anemia

@article{Sotos2016WhatAA,
  title={“What an Affliction”: Mary Todd Lincoln’s Fatal Pernicious Anemia},
  author={John G. Sotos},
  journal={Perspectives in Biology and Medicine},
  year={2016},
  volume={58},
  pages={419 - 443}
}
  • J. Sotos
  • Published 5 July 2016
  • Medicine
  • Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
To date, no single diagnosis has unified the psychiatric illness and the numerous poorly defined physical complaints that Mary Lincoln (née Todd, 1818–1882) suffered in adulthood. Here, I show that her physical ailments spanned 30 years and included sore mouth, pallor, paresthesias, the Lhermitte symptom, fever, headaches, fatigue, resting tachycardia, edema, episodic weight loss, progressive weakness, ataxia, and visual impairment. Long thought hypochondriacal, these findings, plus their time… 
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References

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