Job's Illness

Excerpt

To the editor: The scholarly exposition by Kapusta and Frank (1) makes a strong case for Job's illness as a model of depression. Yet diagnosis derived by historical reconstruction of events without benefit of observation of the patient may be erroneous. Psychohistorical inference and diagnosis are even chancier when the historical source is autobiographical, as in Job's instance.

We offer an alternative suggestion—that Job suffered from pellagra. He had been a prosperous man with a well-balanced premorbid personality. His fortunes suddenly turned; possibly he was deprived of a full diet, or experienced severe anorexia because of grief incidental to his