As bad as the diseases could be the treatments of the times could be worst. One of the most common treatments for many illness of the times including depression was a pill called "Blue Mass", which was in fact Mercury Oxide. Many of the Union soldiers after the war suffered from drug addictions and mercury poisoning because of the medical treatments they recieved. That is as much of what I was talking about VD, which has a effect on mental conditions in the different forms of these diseases, and the treatment of diseases without antibotics as anything.

If Anderson was having some sort of mental imbalance, Shell Shock, P.T.S.D., or even a headache, he may have been treated with a medical procedure common at the time which complicated the situation. Some believe that Lincoln himself was a heavy user of "Blue Mass" medications due to his depression and that this accounts for the haggarded appearence in his late war photographs.