Chopin Suffered Epilepsy

In an effort to better understand that man behind the music, researchers have discovered that Fredric Chopin suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. The wild-eyed composer often saw a "cohort of phantoms" and ghosts, but it was dismissed as possible bipolar disorder. Chopin was always ill--he was already dying from lung disease at 39 and took a drug called laudanum to help with another ailment but it wouldn't produce such hallucinations. Researchers looked through Chopin's correspondence with friends and family to investigate his behavior. In a letter to George Sand's daughter, Chopin writes that he had to leave the stage during a 1848 performance because he saw creatures coming from the piano.