Did Mary Lincoln need committal?

[LincolnMan]

(06-18-2013 04:19 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Possibly we can get to the bottom of this. When Bill mentioned the topic last summer, he said the information came from an article in the November 1968 Civil War Times Illustrated. The author was Patricia Bell. Bill, do you have that edition of the magazine? If not, does anyone? I am thinking perhaps Patricia Bell footnoted her statement, and we might find the origin of this false information through her footnote.

There is an article on the web here for which I do not see an author or a source. Could that be Patricia Bell's article? In this article it says, "But Mary Lincoln probably cannot be held responsible for her most maddening traits, because they were either directly attributable to or heightened by a mental illness not understood in her own day. An autopsy performed at her death revealed that Mrs. Lincoln had been suffering from a brain tumor; all her life she had been subject to severe headaches."

If that is indeed Patricia Bell's article then we can trace the rumor to at least 1968. And perhaps earlier if that is Bell's article and there was a footnote in the version carried by Civil War Times Illustrated.

As there was no post mortem examination of Mary's remains I have no clue where this stuff comes from.

Roger: I reviewed the issue this morning. The article is not footnoted. She recommends further reading on the topic of "Mary Lincoln"- listing a few books at that time that would have been current. So the mystery of Mary having a brain tumor remains unsolved.