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Previous Volume 357:518-519 August 2, 2007 Number 5

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By François Martin Mai. 270 pp., illustrated. Montreal, McGill–Queen's University Press, 2007. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-7735-3190-1.

François Martin Mai is a psychiatrist who has written an excellent book describing Ludwig van Beethoven's life, his health problems, and how his illnesses may have influenced his creativity. Mai examines Beethoven's inauspicious childhood and lifelong chronic illnesses. By the time he was 28 years old, Beethoven had already become profoundly deaf, a circumstance that damaged his self-esteem and jeopardized his professional and artistic future. His life was also made miserable by chronic diarrhea, abdominal pain, chronic respiratory illness, depression, and alcohol abuse. However, he made all these detrimental personal matters subservient to the composition of beautiful music.

Deafness was . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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