Jane Austen, author "Emma" and "Pride and Prejudice," was born in 1775 and died in 1817. Sandra Tuppen, lead curator of Modern Archives & Manuscripts 1601-1850 at the British Library, suggested in a blog post that Austen was poisoned with arsenic. Other experts said it's an unlikely theory. Past explanations for her early death include "cancer, tuberculosis and Addison's disease."
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Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-82), wife of President Abraham Lincoln, was forcibly committed to an asylum, but a contemporary doctor and scholar now believes she wasn't mentally ill at all. Instead, he believes, she had a condition called pernicious anemia.
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Looking at the historic record, contemporary doctor and scholar John Sotos believes President Lincoln (1809-65), suffered from a rare genetic disease, MEN2B, in which nerve cells and long bones grow excessively.
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President Ronald Reagan's (1911-2004) son wrote that he believed his father showed early signs of Alzheimer's while still serving as president.
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A modern-day CT scan and DNA analysis of the mummified body of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun revealed the 19-year-old was not in good health. He had a club foot; a broken leg; an overbite; and Kohler's disease, a rare bone disorder.
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A 2006 study of President John Adams (1735-1826) suggests he may have been bipolar.
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President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) was indisposed due to a toothache, he told the public. After he died, historians learned that he secretly had surgery for oral cancer, a procedure considered incredibly dangerous at the time.
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Despite limited medical evidence, at least 150 doctor scholars have tried to diagnose painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90). Some argue that he suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. Others suggest that he was bipolar or struggled with depression.
