Asthma and Human Excellence

Abstract

Superior intelligence, creative genius, extraordinary personality, and/or social prominence have been associated with asthma often enough to raise the question of a nonrandom concurrence. With no intent to prove any developmental correlation, this section of the Journal of Asthma presents such “case reports” (more biographical than biological) for two main reasons: (A) to document the experience of asthma in the life of outstanding persons and (B) to make everyone better acquainted-using asthma as an “excuse”- with the work and times of some unique human beings.

Seneca and His Asthma: The Illnesses, Life, and Death of a Roman Stoic Philosopher