Journal of Medical Biography > Volume 16, Number 1 > Pp. 21-29

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Anatomists

The many ailments of Herman Melville (1819–91)

John J Ross 

Herman Melville developed debilitating physical and psychiatric disorders in middle age after writing, perhaps, the greatest of American novels, Moby Dick. This article critically examines claims that Melville had bipolar affective disorder and alcoholism, and suggests he may also have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Melville was active and vigorous in youth but in middle age he developed recurrent attacks of eye pain, photophobia and disabling low back pain. Melville's contemporaries usually attributed his physical problems to ‘neurasthenia’ and his biographers have often dismissed them as psychosomatic. However, Melville's clinical course, abnormally rigid posture, loss of 1 inches in height between the ages of 30 and 37, and a family history of rheumatological disease, suggest a diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis.

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