as "maria the pious" or "maria the mad" because of both her religious fervor and her acute mental illness, which made her incapable of handling state affairs after 1792 – is also thought to have had porphyria. francis willis, the same physician who treated george iii, was even summoned by the portuguese court but returned to england after the court limited the treatments he could oversee. contemporary sources, such as secretary of state for foreign affairs luís pinto de sousa coutinho, noted that the queen had ever-worsening stomach pains and abdominal spasms: hallmarks of porphyria. vlad iii dracula, "the impaler." vlad iii was also said to have had acute porphyria, which may have started the notion that vampires were allergic to sunlight. vincent van gogh. other commentators have suggested that vincent van gogh may have had acute intermittent porphyria. king nebuchadnezzar of babylon. the description of this king in daniel 4 suggests to some that he had porphyria. physician archie cochrane. he was born with porphyria, which caused health problems throughout his life. paula frías allende. the daughter of the chilean novelist isabel allende. she fell into a porphyria-induced coma in 1991, which inspired isabel to write the memoir paula, dedicated to her. george iii in his coronation robes mary, queen of scots c. 1578. maria i of portugal in a c. 1790s portrait attributed to giuseppe troni or thomas hickey. uses in literature stated or implied references to porphyria are included in some literature, particularly gothic literature. these include the following: the condition is the name of the title character in the gothic poem "porphyria's lover," by robert browning. the condition is heavily implied to be the cause of the symptoms suffered by the narrator in the gothic short story "lusus naturae," by margaret atwood. some of the narrator's symptoms resemble those of porphyria, and one passage of the story states that the name of the narrator's disease "had some ps and rs in it."