Chapter 55 waiting for streptomycin

I didn't see what I wanted to see in the two films related to Chopin, "A Song to Remember" and "Longing for Love". Except for a few more violent coughs, I did not see the existence of the ghost that occupied the most important position in his life - tuberculosis.I only see how he cares about his country and how he is entangled with George Sand.But for a chronically ill patient, what really unites his soul and body is not ideals and love, but disease. The nineteenth century in which he lived was the golden age of literature and art, and it was also the first peak of tuberculosis in Europe. In 1827, when Chopin was seventeen, his youngest sister, Amelia, died of tuberculosis. In February 1839, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. At two o'clock in the morning on October 17, 1849, he died of tuberculosis.He had expected this result: "I am closer to the coffin than the marriage bed, and my soul is peaceful. In this case, I can only obey." He did not wait for the prosperity of his motherland Poland, let alone the special medicine for tuberculosis streptomycin.

And there were many artists before and after that who didn't wait for streptomycin, didn't expect streptomycin even in their most fervent fantasies.Composers Giovanni Battista Pegolesi, Luigi Poccellini, Karl Maria von Weber, Paganini, Grieg, and Stravinsky, All died of tuberculosis.If this list is extended to the fields of literature and art, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Chekhov, Stevenson, the Bronte sisters, Kafka, and Munch must be added.Because of them, tuberculosis was once considered an occupational disease of artists, because of them, when humans did not know it was an infectious disease, they thought it was related to emotional weakness, and "made tuberculosis once associated with youth, purity, enthusiasm, sadness and talent. get in touch".Subsequent generations of scientists have thus concluded: "There is a definite link between tuberculosis and genius and creativity."

In 1943, fifteen years after the discovery of penicillin, Selman Abraham Waxman discovered streptomycin in soil.From that day on, the treatment of tuberculosis has specific drugs.From that day on, geniuses in literature and art were no longer associated with tuberculosis, pale faces, and premature death.However, Chopin didn't wait for this day, he didn't wait for streptomycin, on his emerald bank, spring came a hundred years late. Streptomycin came along, isoniazid (1952) came along, rifampicin (1963) came along, but some people didn't wait.The feelings of those waiting individuals are beyond imagination.We have no way of knowing how to deal with a sensitive heart in the era of the spread of the "Black Death" when there are people dragging corpses past the window; nor can we know how Chopin took care of his creation when he knew that his life was not long. And the emotional entanglement with George Sand; I don't know why Xiao Hong wrote such a paragraph: "If spring hangs around for a while, it will miss a lot of lives." And she, too, In the troubled times, in the troubled Hong Kong, she died of a respiratory disease, and she couldn't wait until spring.

And we are still waiting, waiting for spring, waiting for the war to subside, and waiting for "streptomycin" belonging to hepatotropic virus and AIDS.In the waiting and consumption that all human beings are born with, how can we talk about our little pain?