Did Mary Lincoln Suffer from Pernicious Anemia?

[RJNorton]

(07-10-2016 02:38 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  This was new to me, too. Please excuse if I overlooked in the article, but where does this quite specific "major physical finding"

Eva, Dr. Sotos writes:

"True pain is classically absent or atypical in PA (Cabot 1896; Woltman 1924). Her physician commented “she did not often experience pain,” and Mary’s few references to non-cranial “pain” generally do not elaborate. An exception was from 1868 to 1870, when she complained of “great . . . pain in my spine” that was both “burning” and “cold.” This unusual sensation, which never again appeared in her letters, fits the Lhermitte symptom: a disagreeable “electric” sensation that travels down the spine or limbs after neck flexion. It is “a common early symptom of subacute combined degeneration of the cord,” occurring in 25% of SCD inpatients from 1962 to 1971 (Gautier-Smith 1973, 861). Generally brief and non-painful, it may sometimes be pervasive, “violent,” and enervating (Lhermitte, Bollak, and Nicholas 1924; Olkon 1933; Pearce 1994). Descriptions of the Lhermitte symptom, starting with the original in 1924, invariably cast it as “electric” (Lhermitte, Bollak, and Nicholas 1924). Mary, living before the age of household electricity, appears to have used close non-electrical metaphors. (Jumping into cold water, for example, can feel like an electric shock.)"