EDGAR ALLEN POE & MUSES SYNDROME (ACUTE HYPERSENSITIVITY OR SENSORY DEFENSIVENESS)

Sprinkled throughout the writings of Edgar Allen Poe are references to anxiety, panic, and hypersensitivity.   Note these from The Fall of the House of Usher (1839):

• “Constant nervous agitation”
• “Suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses”
• “Insipid food was alone endurable”
• “Could wear only garments of certain texture”
• “Odors of all flowers were oppressive”
• “Eyes were tortured by even a faint light”
• “Had hysteria in his whole demeanor”
• “Struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me”
• “Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable”

   Poe appears to have suffered MUSES SYNDROME, a specific kind of toxic poisoning  caused by carbon dioxide (CO) poisoning and characterized by multiple chemical sensitivity, acute hypersensitivity to stimuli (sensory defensiveness), anxiety, and panic.  Poe was likely poisoned by exposure from gas lighting in 1829, while rooming for a few months with his cousin Edward Mosher in Beltzhoover's Hotel in downtown Baltimore.

Excerpted from: Anxiety: Hidden Causes (Symmetry, 2011). www.sharonheller.net