[Cryptography] The Voynich Manuscript as a product of a mental health disorder

[Peter Gutmann]

Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> writes:

>This is very interesting hypothesis, but I would like to see (or, I wonder it
>there is) some kind of statistics: how often those kinds of diseases result in
>producing a manual written in cryptic / undecipherable language?

This is art, not science, you don't get a repeatable experiment.  Look at the
later works of Louis Wain, a classic example of this used in psych texts...
here's one story on it:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/creatology/how-a-mental-disorder-opened-up-an-invisible-world-of-colour-and-pattern/

Here's a direct link showing the progression:

https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/0/4579/12141236/Progression_Louis_Wain_IllustrationChronicles_1500.jpg

(note that these aren't a direct progression from start to finish, he often
had several works in progress at a time so some may be contemporaneous).  Wain
ended up in a (at the time) lunatic asylum, in earlier years if they were
lucky they would have been seen as highly spiritual and ended up in a secluded
religious life, which is where something like the Voynich could have been
produced.

Peter.