Chopin's disease

Frédéric Chopin's disease and the reason for his premature death at age 39 remain unclear. Although he was diagnosed with and treated for tuberculosis throughout his lifetime, a number of alternative diagnoses have been suggested since his death in 1849. A comprehensive review of the possible causes of Chopin's illness was published in 2011.

From childhood, Frédéric Chopin was sickly and under medical care. He showed intolerance to fatty foods, especially pork – these caused stomach aches, diarrhea and weight loss. Later he endeavored to avoid such symptoms with diet; he obtained substantial improvement with ingredients such as honey and oat bran. Chopin attained a height of 170 centimetres (5 ft 7 in) — the 25th percentile; and as an adult weighed under 45 kilograms (99 lb) — below the 3rd percentile.

Chopin is known to have had no facial hair at the age of 22; as he wrote in the winter of 1832, he grew sideburns on only one side of his face. In 1826 he was sick for six months, suffering from enlarged cervical lymph nodes and severe headaches. In 1830, a chronic cold caused nasal swelling which prompted him to cancel planned concerts in Vienna.

In 1831, while in Paris, 21-year-old Chopin had his first episode of hemoptysis (coughing up of blood). 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.

In early youth, he treated himself with belladonna. In the final decade of his life, he treated the coughing fits from which he had suffered his entire life, with a blend of sugar and opium. Chopin coughed up an abundant amount of mucus, particularly around 10 a.m. He occasionally drank alcohol, sometimes smoked and – as some authors noted – suffered the consequences of inhaling others' smoke while enjoying the company of his Parisian friends. In the last year of his life, he endured diarrheas, caused either by cor pulmonale or by exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (see below).

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