Music and Medicine: Hummel, Weber, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner: On Their Lives, Works, and Medical Histories (2)

In this second volume of the 3-volume Music & Medicine series, Neumayr investigates the lives, music, and medical histories of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Carl Maria von Weber, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Anton Bruckner. Neumayr, a world-recognized physician and scientist, presents biographies of these master composers, with special attention to their illnesses and diagnostic interpretations. With great acumen, he scrutinizes the sources and the statements of contemporaries, gathering memories and facts, studying theories on their deaths. In many cases, he contradicts with expert competence his medical colleagues who died long ago, for although he has consulted letters and documents contemporary to the musicians themselves, his diagnoses are based on the medical knowledge of the present day, knowledge not available to the doctors of those days.