Health of Frédéric Chopin

Later, he endeavored to avoid such symptoms with diet; he obtained substantial improvement with ingredients such as honey and oat bran.

In 1835, he suffered a severe two-month bout of laryngitis and bronchitis, and the resulting interruption in his correspondence with Warsaw gave rise to gossip that he had died.

Chopin coughed up an abundant amount of mucus, particularly around 10 a.m.[6] He, as some authors noted, suffered the consequences of inhaling others' smoke while enjoying the company of his Parisian friends.

His physician, Jean Cruveilhier, confirmed his death by holding a mirror to Chopin's mouth and by illuminating his pupils with light from a candle.

However, Wojciech Grzymała, in a letter to Auguste Leo dated October 1849, wrote that the autopsy had not confirmed tubercular pulmonary changes and that his actual disease was unknown to contemporary medicine.

Chopin's physicians in Paris included Aleksander Hofman, Jean-Jacques Molin, André François Cauviere, Jan Matuszyński, Adam Raciborski, Pierre Gaubert, Gustave Papet and Coste, while during his 1848 stay in London they were Mallan and James Clark.

[citation needed] Chopin was diagnosed with tuberculosis and treated for it in accordance with contemporary practice, including bloodletting and purging.

[16] Attempts were made to gain permission to extract a small amount of tissue from Chopin's heart in order to test it for a range of specific conditions.

Dr. Michael Witt of Warsaw's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology made such a request in 2008, but permission was denied by the Polish government.

[17] In April 2014, a visual inspection was at last performed on Chopin's alcohol-preserved heart, under the direction of Professor Witt of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

[21] The most important argument against this hypothesis is the absence of evidence that Chopin suffered from rheumatic fever in childhood, which is the most common cause of mitral valve stenosis.

The author cited biographers concerning Chopin's character and psyche and pointed out some symptoms that might indicate a manic-depressive disorder or dementia praecox (now termed schizophrenia), but he emphasized the absence of evidence for severe psychosis and the fact that single symptoms may suggest only a predisposition to such mental illnesses.