TELEGRAPH – BLOGS – ANDREW M BROWN: Did Osama bin Laden suffer from a dry skin condition? Hives, eczema, even psoriasis (which is aggravated by stress, interestingly)? Psoriasis really would be a wretched affliction for someone who’s cooped up 24 hours a day, a prisoner in effect, behind walls 15 feet high. Dennis Potter’s Singing Detective was a victim of it.
I ask about the skin condition because if you look at some of the video of the interior of the al-Qaeda leader’s compound you can clearly see a shelf, and on the shelf there’s a neat row of medicine bottles. In the foreground is a family-size jar of Vaseline lying on its side, or so it appears. Giving further credence to the possibility of a skin condition, there’s a big white jar just behind the Vaseline. It has an odd-shaped lid. It could be an inhaler – asthma, maybe, which goes with eczema sometimes? Perhaps, but it could also be a pump-action dispenser, and the contents of the jar something like aqueous cream, something you might want to slather onto an itchy or eczematous rash that was flaring up because you were bored and anxious, as I expect bin Laden was. Continue reading and comment » | Andrew M Brown | Thursday, May 04, 2011
