Wilhelm Ebstein, a Professor of Medicine,[562] recently, and not without reason, registered a protest against the view of those who maintain that Luther was actually out of his mind. Himself interested in the treatment of cases of gout and calculus, he comes to the conclusion that Luther’s chief sufferings were caused by uric acid and faulty digestion, the two together constituting the principal trouble, and being accompanied, as is so often the case with gout, by “neurasthenic symptoms which at times recall psychosis”;[563] his “hypochondriacal depression which passed all bounds” was entirely due to these ailments. Not only these “nervous symptoms,” but also the other ailments of which Luther had to complain, his palpitations, headaches, dizziness, sore-throat, defective hearing, impaired digestion, fainting fits, and particularly his oppression in the region of the heart and the feelings of fear which accompanied it, all these were, according to Ebstein, due more or less to gout and the other troubles resulting from the presence of uric acid.[564] There can be no doubt that this learned physician gives us many useful observations, but he has not himself selected his historical matter and carefully tested its source. Much of it comes from Küchenmeister, whereas, at the present stage of research, a medical opinion, to carry real weight, must necessarily enter at greater length into the facts more recently brought to light. Some of Küchenmeister’s opinions have, however, been revised by Ebstein, and not without good reason. Among those of Ebstein’s statements that must be characterised as historically untenable are the following, viz. that Luther’s hallucinations and visions occurred “almost without exception at a time when he was yet under the influence of the asceticism of the monastery, with its night-vigils, spiritual exercises and strenuous mental labours,” i.e. in his Catholic days; likewise, that, in the monastery, he had striven “most diligently to outdo the other monks in the matter of fasting, watching,” etc.; that, in later days, he had “_always_ been able to master his morbid states, and to bid defiance to his moods of depression,” and that these latter had “in no way detracted” from his mental labours; that his method of controversy had never been a morbid one, as Küchenmeister had asserted on insufficient grounds, and that, when even Luther referred to mental sufferings and temptations, his “bodily ailments” _always_ occupied the first place and constituted the leading factor.[565] His theory that Luther suffered from gout is also eminently doubtful.