An aside on the use of medical theory. Back when psycho-history was the hot new thing, it struck me that historians who used medical theories that attempt to explain healthy individuals -- for example Erik Ericson on childhood developmental patterns etc. -- often shed some persuasive light on their subjects - but that others who opted for more pathological theories often seemed to be drawn astray. For example, if memory serves, John Demos relied on Ericson and was persuasive in his A Little Commonwealth, while, to me at least, a more recent study of William Byrd II that relied an a more pathological model wasn't. (There were of course other differences between the books.)
  I suspect a parallel may be in play in the attempt to link Thomas Jefferson and Asperger Syndrome.
  Another parallel is so-called 'lawyer's history' - where the argument is bent to the theory to be proved.
  And finally (based on reading extensively about malaria and similar diseases in early America and Europe) there is the tendency - like an amateur physician engaged in self-diagnosis - to find the symptoms that one is looking for, and to ignore indications to the contrary.
  In all, several grains of salt . . . . and of course there's always Freud's warning that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Jon Kukla



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