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Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis (2008) 27:11511157 DOI 10.1007/s10096-008-0571-x
REVIEW
Syphilis in composers and musiciansMozart, Beethoven, Paganini, Schubert, Schumann, Smetana
C. Franzen
Received: 7 January 2008 /Accepted: 29 May 2008 / Published online: 1 July 2008 # Springer-Verlag 2008
Abstract In the pre-antibiotics era, syphilis was an extremely common disease. The first well-recorded European outbreak of what is now known as syphilis occurred in 1494, when it appeared among French troops besieging Naples. Thereafter, the disease spread all over Europe and, in the 18th and 19th centuries, many artists became victims of syphilis, among them poets, painters, philosophers, and musicians and composers. This review presents biographies of several musicians and composers that probably suffered from syphilis.
Introduction
Syphilis arrived in Europe from America and was probably carried over by Spanish seafarers when Columbus sailed back from America to Spain in the years after 1493 [1]. However, this theory has been discredited by some evidence for cases observed in the remains of pre-Columbian Europeans [1]. The troops of Charles VIII, King of France, who marched to Naples in 1493, were probably infected by soldiers of King Ferdinand of Naples, who had also hired mercenaries, among them soldiers from Barcelona in Spain. Many of the besieged gave up and succumbed to the French troops, who spread the disease on their way back north. Since 1495, the disease has appeared epidemically and spread explosively over the whole of Europe.
As the disease was primarily linked to the French army, the first designation was French disease or morbus gallicus. The name syphilis came from a poem by the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro in 1530, known in Latin as Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (Syphilis or the French disease) [1]. In this poem, Syphilus, a shepherd boy who lives in the time of King Acithous of Haiti, loses his sheep because of a drought. He blames the sun god and propagates to render homage to King Acithous, rather than the sun god. The sun god took revenge by sending a plague of a dreadful disease to Haiti, and Syphilus was the very first victim.
The French venereologist Philippe Ricord differentiated syphilis from gonorrhea through a series of experimental inoculations from syphilitic chancres. He also identified primary, secondary, and...