肖邦被认为是仅次于莫扎特的音乐天才，是伟大的作曲家和出色的钢琴家，被誉为浪漫音乐的大师。他的音乐常常给人以幻觉，“他对个性化旋律、对情感深入内心的音乐表达都具有世人罕见的天赋，他的音乐以诗意的情感沁入人心，而这种情感又几乎具有普世的感染力...."had the rare gift of a very personal melody, expressive of heart-felt emotion, and his music is penetrated by a poetic feeling that has an almost universal appeal.... （Wikipedia）然而这样一个音乐巨人英年早逝，去世时仅39岁。肖邦和他的音乐属于不朽一类的。 有很多人研究肖邦，从各个不同的角度。最近Science上介绍了一项历史考证（病史、回忆等等），基本结论是肖邦患有颞叶癫痫，就是两耳朵廓对应部位的大脑皮层，这可是让人有“神性”的病啊，常会有幻觉（幻听、幻视），怪不得呢。不知道莫扎特又是什么样一种情形，嘿嘿。不过离开患者靠间接的信息做“隔空”诊断总是有些不靠谱啊，满足猎奇心倒是没问题，还给了人无穷想象的空间。 http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/frederic-chopins-madness-diagnos.html?rss=1 Frédéric Chopin's 'Madness' Diagnosed by Sara Reardon on 24 January 2011, 6:30 PM | Permanent Link | 2 Comments Inner demons. Composer Frédéric Chopin has a wary look in his eye in this portrait. Who knows what epilepsy-induced hallucinations he was seeing? Credit: Close up from a painting by Eugène Delacroix Inner demons. Composer Frédéric Chopin has a wary look in his eye in this portrait. Who knows what epilepsy-induced hallucinations he was seeing? Credit: Close up from a painting by Eugène Delacroix Inner demons. Composer Frédéric Chopin has a wary look in his eye in this portrait. Who knows what epilepsy-induced hallucinations he was seeing? Credit: Close up from a painting by Eugène Delacroix In 1848, Polish composer and piano virtuoso Frédéric Chopin was performing at a house in Paris when he suddenly stopped in the middle of a piece and left the stage. In a letter to a friend, Chopin later wrote: "I was about to play the March when, suddenly, I saw emerging from the half-open case of my piano those cursed creatures that had appeared to me on a lugubrious night at the Carthusian monastery. I had to leave for a while in order to recover myself, and after that I continued playing without saying a word." Although Chopin's family and friends interpreted such episodes as the colorful workings of a sensitive and brilliant mind, a new paper offers another hypothesis: Chopin suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, which caused him to have frequent hallucinations. "Our aim was to split the romanticized cliché from reality in order to better understand his life," says Chopin fan and lead author of the study, radiologist Manuel Vásquez Caruncho of Xeral-Calde Hospital in Lugo, Spain. Perhaps because of the tortured artist archetype and his well-documented poor health, Chopin, who died in 1849 at the age of 39, has been a popular subject for posthumous diagnoses. Originally reported to have died of tuberculosis, the composer probably fell victim to cystic fibrosis or liver disease, according to extensive research by medical historians. However, researchers have paid little attention to his neurology; doctors during Chopin's time knew little of psychosis and nothing of epilepsy. In their analysis, Caruncho and his co-author, neurologist Francisco Braas Fernández, drew heavily from descriptions of Chopin's behavior by his friends and pupils and from his own writings. Their vivid recollections report finding the composer late at night, "pale in front of the piano, with wild eyes and his hair on end," unable to recognize them for short periods. He spoke often of a "cohort of phantoms" that haunted him, of seeing his friends as the walking dead, and feeling "like steam." Only a handful of neurological disorders produce the phantasmagoria that tormented Chopin, who didn't abuse drugs or alcohol. The visions he described, such as demons crawling out of his piano, are now known as Lilliputian hallucinations: detailed visions of people or objects that are much smaller than they are in life. The authors rule out schizophrenia and other common psychoses because Chopin's hallucinations were visual, not auditory, and because he lacked other telltale symptoms such as eye problems or migraines. His short hallucinatory episodes are a hallmark of temporal lobe epilepsy, the team reports online today in Medical Humanities . Without the ability to observe Chopin himself, the authors admit that it is difficult to be conclusive, although Caruncho says that testimonies from witnesses are key in diagnosing epilepsy even today. Eric Altschuler, a physician and neurologist at New Jersey Medical School in Newark, says that although the study is interesting, at this point it's not convincing. "Historical diagnoses should be pretty straightforward; this one is subtle," he says. "But it's a good, thought-provoking proposal. Epilepsy is very, very common. It's quite possible." Caruncho hopes the analysis will lead to more research on Chopin's diseases. In the meantime, he is continuing his hobby of researching the medical history of other musicians such as Beethoven. Says Caruncho, "I guess I'm a pathological music lover."
标签: 癫痫
