How was Roderick Usher a picture of the artistic personality?

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2002

Answers

Dear Lydia

Poe's Roderick Usher ("Fall of the House of...") was perhaps based on someone with acute intermittent porphyria (JAMA 261: 863, 1989).

UMKC's Loretta Loftus et. al. suggests porphyria as the cause of Vincent VanGogh's craziness (Br. Med. J. 303: 1589, 1991).

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2002