The Mad King

King George the Third of England is most remembered as the king during the American Revolution. But he's also known as the mad king. A variety of theories were used to explain his bizarre behavior, but a new analysis confirms he did suffer from a mental illness.

The King's symptoms included agitation, incoherent speech, episodes of violence and sexual impropriety. When the science of psychiatry was developed, they speculated he suffered from manic depressive psychosis. That was dismissed and another theory became widely accepted that the king suffered from porphyria.

Porphyrins are required to produce hemoglobin, the molecule that transports oxygen in the blood. Excessively high levels affect the nervous system, however, recent reviews of the King's medical records just don't support this.

In the new study, scientists used a machine learning technique where computers compare writings of people with mental illness to those without. The computers learned to pick out writings of people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and dementia.

Pulling the king's letters, scientists compared the ones written before, during and after episodes of mental derangement, looking at sentence structure, vocabulary, and variations of words. They found big differences between times of good health and times of mental derangement. Those letters were less complex and had reduced vocabulary, and greater redundancy and predictability. Researchers conclude it's likely he suffered from acute mania.

Hmmm' how interesting it would be to use this technology on all our historical figures!