No; mainly because characters who are slowly rotting away don't make good main characters. We've seen male Ashaman go insane, but not any of the main ones, so we have no reason to think that RJ meant for this to be considered a mythical affliction that was never expressed in real life. We are told this happens and the Big White Book mentions this as well - "Even those (male channelers) who do manage to learn some control die from a slow wasting sickness that causes the sufferer to rot alive...". Later, the BWB says "Once the taint took over, the victim began to slowly rot. His body decayed around him, his mind failed, and the destructive nightmare eventually devoured him...Sometimes the erosion of mind and body was quite rapid, at other times agonizingly slow. There are indications that many victims knew what was happening, but were powerless to stop it."

So even though we haven't seen it on screen, this might have more to do with the fact that the mental illness manifests first, with the rotting disease taking more time to run its' course.



We are also told this in the BWB. "Lews Therin and the eighty-six survivors went insane on the instant, perhaps not even knowing that their attempt to Seal the Bore had been successful...Within days these powerful male channelers, armed with the One Power and completely out of control, began unleashing their might against anyone or anything that crossed their path or even caught their notice...Unfortunately, the Companions were not the only ones affected by the backlash (the taint). Other male Aes Sedai were touching the True Source continuosly for other matters, but although they noticed the taint right away, no one knew what it was; though it covered all saidin like a coat of rancid oil, it did not prevent or directly alter the use of the One Power. Unlike the Companions, most male Aes Sedai were not affected immediately. Some time passed before other men started going insane, and still more (time passed) before anyone realized the cause. While some sources date the Breaking from the major destruction caused by Lews Therin and the survivors of the Hundred Companions, others put the real beginning as much as ten years later, when so many of the male Aes Sedai had succumbed to the taint, adding their nightmares to the destruction that there was no longer any hope of stopping it..."

So while the male Aes Sedai noticed, they did not know what the taint was, and as stated, it took almost ten years before the madness had spread enough that the cause could be identified as the taint.



Which was Sidious' point and which I agreed with; with civilization falling apart, the taint afflicting all of the male Aes Sedai and confusion over what the taint was, by the time a treatment could be applied, it could no longer be done in a systematic way to contain the destruction. When the major geological and climate changes were touched off by saidin, lasting from 239 to 344 years, any hope of containing the taint and treating the male Aes Sedai had collapsed so that years later, all of the female channelers still claiming the title 'Aes Sedai' had given up on Healing male channelers and concentrated on surviving the cataclysms and containing the threat.