Well, now you know....

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KARL Marx, who complained of excruciating boils, actually suffered from a chronic skin disease with known psychological effects that may well have influenced his writings, a British expert said today.

Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands - found mainly in the armpits and groin - become blocked and inflamed.

“In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem,” Prof Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology, said.

“This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”

“The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day,” Marx told Friedrich Engels in a letter from 1867.

Karl Marx may have suffered from painful boils | The Daily Telegraph

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