CDZ Did you Know that Lincoln and Davis were Brain Damaged?

[william the wie]

Lincoln as grammar school kid mistook a horse for a pet and the resulting skull fracture knocked him out for 24 hours. The sideeffects were treated with mercury compounds for most of his adult life.

Davis suffered from malarial inflammation of the brain that left him with light sensitivity and chronic facial pain.

How should this affect the game I'm trying to launch?

 

[usmbguest5318]

Lincoln as grammar school kid mistook a horse for a pet and the resulting skull fracture knocked him out for 24 hours. The sideeffects were treated with mercury compounds for most of his adult life.

Davis suffered from malarial inflammation of the brain that left him with light sensitivity and chronic facial pain.

How should this affect the game I'm trying to launch?

Corroborating and credible references, please.

The topic's somewhat interesting, but I'm not going to just take your word for it that they were both mentally ill, deficient, brain-diseased, etc.

 

[william the wie]

I just checked wiki-leaks. I'm far less concerned with trying to convince you on the subject of the leaders during the Civil war. I'm more concerned with finding out how widespread this problem was with arsenic and mercury as the only effective antibiotics until sulfa drugs were invented in the 1930s. Syphilis and malaria were common ailments well into the 20th century and they added to the fun.

 

[Picaro]

The country was also a nation of drunks; alcohol consumption per capita was almost 3 times that of Europe's, and mass immigration since 1820 had dire effects on the general health of the population as well. Cholera and other epidemics were routine. And yes, Lincoln was indeed mentally ill, slept with a man most of his adult life, not his wife, who was also nuts. He was obviously a sociopath, but that wasn't particularly rare then.

Don't know what your timeline involves, but if you go with less massive immigration waves or restrictions, add about 15% to both the heights and lifespans of Americans.

 

[usmbguest5318]

I just checked wiki-leaks. I'm far less concerned with trying to convince you on the subject of the leaders during the Civil war. I'm more concerned with finding out how widespread this problem was with arsenic and mercury as the only effective antibiotics until sulfa drugs were invented in the 1930s. Syphilis and malaria were common ailments well into the 20th century and they added to the fun.

I'm [interested to discover] how widespread this problem was with arsenic and mercury as the only effective antibiotics until sulfa drugs were invented in the 1930s.

That would have been a good sentence/theme to include in your OP so we'd know that rather than discussionis your primary aim.

I'm more concerned with finding out how widespread this problem was with arsenic and mercury as the only effective antibiotics until sulfa drugs were invented in the 1930s. Syphilis and malaria were common ailments well into the 20th century and they added to the fun.

I don't know really anything about 19th century medicine. I know how to become somewhat informed about it.

• Unregulated potions still cause mercury poisoning
  
• Mercury poisoning in 19th century america
• Mercury use 19th century american medicine
• Therapeutic Mule: The Use of Arsenic in the Nineteenth Century Materia Medica
  
• Samson of the Materia Medica: Medical Theory and the Use and Abuse of Calomel: In Nineteenth Century America

I suspect that whatever documents you can't find for free on the WWW, you can at least read in the reading room of your local med/pharmacy school library or online at a standard library.

Hopefully something above will be helpful to you.

 

[TNHarley]

maybe that explains Lincolns totalitarian lean. He was mentally ill.

 

[william the wie]

maybe that explains Lincolns totalitarian lean. He was mentally ill.

he was also the sanest member of his administration and certainly saner than both his predecessor and his successor.

 

[Picaro]

The irony is that If he hadn't been assassinated, he would have been impeached by the radicals just as Johnson was, because he wasn't interested at all in destroying the South, just taxing them to pay for his corporate welfare programs; the Radicals impeached Johnson because he was going to follow Lincoln's plan of restoration of rights, and of keeping blacks in the South and out of the new territories, states, and from migrating into the Northern states; in the event, the latter happened anyway, since the war was never about slavery nor black suffrage in the first place for the vast majority of the abolitionists themselves or the supporters of the war, which included a majority of northern Democrats. He was planning to offer much more lenient terms, but created a monster he ultimately lost control of instead. This latter point would have to be incorporated into any scenario in which Lincoln survives the war.

 

[Picaro]

maybe that explains Lincolns totalitarian lean. He was mentally ill.

he was also the sanest member of his administration and certainly saner than both his predecessor and his successor.

The only member of his Cabinet who supported his starting the war was his Postmaster General; even Seward, the only member with a real record of advocating suffrage throughout his career, and Winfield Scott and the rest of the Cabinet opposed his blockade of Charleston. And despite all the revisionism behind the Lincoln Myth, he knew exactly what that would cause. Buchanan had already tried it, and Lincoln hoped for the same reaction it got under Buchanan. It cleared off most of the Supreme Court, except for Tainey, and much of Congress and the Senate, a necessity for his plans. He was sane like Hitler was sane, in that he could care less who died as long as he got his way.

 

[jwoodie]

They were both born in Kentucky...