This Is Not an Anemic Issue

In a recent article (Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 2015,58:419-43), physician and medical historian John G. Sotos suggests that former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln suffered from pernicious anemia. In the years following her husband ’s assassination, Mrs Lincoln was noted to become socially isolated and mentally unstable. Those around her labeled her has hypochondriacal. Dr Sotos goes on to describe how the former first lady manifested a number of signs and symptoms over 3 decades that “…included sore mouth, pallor, pares thesias, the Lhermitte symptom, fever, headaches, fatigue, resting tachycardia, edema, episodic weight loss, progressive weakness, ataxia, and visual impairment.” He concluded that these were all consistent with undiagnosed vitamin B12 deficiency due to chronic multisystem pernicious anemia.

Source: Medical Clinics of North America - December 27, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Bimal H. Ashar Tags: Foreword Source Type: research