Some doctors love poking around in the records of the illnesses that plagued important people, now, safely, long dead. What killed Mozart? Napoleon? Dickens? Why was Hitler’s hand trembling like that? Did Abraham Lincoln have Marfan Syndrome?  The dead make the very best ‘patients’, in the etymological sense. They have to ‘suffer’ the crude pawings of biographically minded MDs, as their shades can only hope that the physician proceeds prudently and with an eye to the evidence. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much the way the living hope their physicians proceed. Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough; the medical lives of famous writers is a new book by John Ross, M.D. The author has rounded up the medical histories of some Eng Lit big guns: Yeats, Orwell, Milton, and William S. hisownself and has tried to  throw some light on how their ailments affected their writings. Dr. Ross suggests that Shakespeare knew a lot about syphilis because he saw it up close: in himself. Maybe, maybe not.  No way to be sure. But that’s part of the fun of post mortem diagnosis. There is no morbidity/mortality conference to show up your mistakes and no harms is done to the subjects, who are, after all. dead. Abibael Zuger, M.D. reviews the book at the link below: (Maybe a holiday gift for that medically minded Someone?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/health/woe-is-syphilis-and-other-afflictions-of-famous-writers.html?ref=health