Tesla's OCD

[David Morris]

http://www.neatorama.com/

No doubt Nikola Tesla was a genius – he was an inventor, physicist,
mechanical and electrical engineer. He was also an extreme germophobe
– he hated hair unless it was his own and found jewelry disgusting. He
did things in three or numbers divisible by three; he always used 18
napkins, estimated the mass of everything he was going to eat and
would not eat with a woman if it was just the two of them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Prior to World War I, Tesla looked overseas for investors to fund his
research. When the war started, Tesla lost the funding he was
receiving from his European patents. After the war ended, Tesla made
predictions regarding the relevant issues of the post-World War I
environment, in a printed article (December 20, 1914). Tesla believed
that the League of Nations was not a remedy for the times and issues.
Tesla started to exhibit pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive
disorder in the years following. He became obsessed with the number
three; he often felt compelled to walk around a block three times
before entering a building, demanded a stack of three folded cloth
napkins beside his plate at every meal, etc. The nature of OCD was
little understood at the time and no treatments were available, so his
symptoms were considered by some to be evidence of partial insanity,
and this undoubtedly hurt what was left of his reputation.