WARSAW, POLAND—Genetic and forensic scientists have examined a heart thought to have belonged to Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, who died in Paris in 1849. His doctor, Jean Cruveilhier, had diagnosed the pianist with tuberculosis, but then noted after an autopsy that he had suffered from a “disease not previously encountered.” Scientists have since wondered if Chopin suffered from cystic fibrosis, or an inherited form of emphysema. The heart, preserved in alcohol and held in a crystal jar, bore “TB nodules,” and was “much enlarged, suggesting respiratory problems, linked to a lung disease,” the scientists reported. “TB pericarditis can be nodular of a diffuse process. Nodules sound good for TB as the diagnosis, but other diseases can mimic that appearance—cancer, and a fungus infection such as aspergillosis. You can’t tell which one by the naked eye,” Sebastian Lucas of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London explained to BBC News. But the investigating team was denied permission to open the jar and test a tissue sample. “It’s not absolutely certain it’s Chopin’s heart,” adds Rose Cholmondeley, president of the London-based Chopin Society. The heart has been returned to its resting place in a pillar at the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw. For the story of how tuberculosis may have arrived in the New World, see "Sea Mammals Spread Deadly Tuberculosis."
