Asthma and Human Excellence: A Coincidence or a Correlation?

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 article presents such “case reports” (more biographical than biological) for two main reasons: to document the experience of asthma in the life of outstanding persons and to make everyone better acquainted-using asthma as an “excuse”-with the work and the times of some unique human beings.