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Frédéric Chopin's disease, and the reason for his premature death at age 39, remain unclear. Though he was diagnosed in his lifetime with tuberculosis and treated for it, since his death in 1849 a number of alternative diagnoses have been suggested. ==Case history== Frédéric Chopin was, from childhood, sickly and under medical care. He showed intolerance of 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 — the 25th percentile; and at age 28 he weighed — below the 3rd percentile. Chopin is known at 22 to have had no facial hair: 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, in Paris, 21-year-old Chopin experienced his first hemoptysis (coughing up of blood). In 1835 he suffered a severe two-month laryngitis and bronchitis, and the resulting interruption in his correspondence with Warsaw gave rise to gossip that he had died.〔John O'Shea: Music & Medicine: Medical Profiles of Great Composers. London: Dent, 1990, p. 144. ISBN 0-460-86106-9〕 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 all his life, with a blend of sugar and opium. Chopin coughed up abundant mucus, especially about ten in the morning.〔John O'Shea: Music & Medicine: Medical Profiles of Great Composers. London: Dent, 1990, p. 143. ISBN 0-460-86106-9〕 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). On 17 October 1849, at 2 a.m., after a sudden coughing fit, Chopin died at the age of 39. 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. Pursuant to Chopin's will, Dr. Cruveilhier, a renowned professor of pathology, carried out an autopsy. The postmortem report was destroyed either in the Paris fire of 1871 or during World War Two. The death certificate stated the cause of Chopin's death as tuberculosis of the lungs and larynx. 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. The postmortem findings were also communicated to Chopin's sister Ludwika, Adolphe Gutmann and Jane Stirling, and their later letters were consistent as to the findings.〔John O'Shea: Music & Medicine: Medical Profiles of Great Composers. London: Dent, 1990, p. 149. ISBN 0-460-86106-9〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chopin's disease」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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