George Gershwin

While George Gershwin was healthy for most of his youth, he began to experience olfactory hallucinations, headaches, and dizziness in his 30s. George Gershwin was born on September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn, New York. His music, unmistakably American, joins classical and popular styles to create an entirely new musical form. His most popular works include Rhapsody in Blue (1924), Porgy and Bess (1935), and An American in Paris (1928). 

Gershwin started to play the piano because it was bought for his older brother, Ira, but had written a Broadway hit, La La Lucille before he turned 20. After writing one successful stage musical after another, Gershwin longed to experiment with chamber music and serious operas. His first breakthrough came with Rhapsody in Blue, then the Concerto in F, then An American in Paris. These compositions drew inspiration from Debussy's impressionism, Stravinsky's polytonality, banjo music, and folk songs. 

Around the time after when An American in Paris was receiving worldwide acclaim, Gershwin began to experience olfactory hallucinations, notably reporting the smell of burning rubber. Other symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, and fainting started in 1937. After two seizures and a loss of consciousness, Gershwin's life was cut tragically short during an operation on his brain at age 38. His death was diagnosed to be a result of a glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). GBMs are characterized as fast-growing and aggressive brain tumors that invade the nearby brain tissue, but usually do not spread to distant organs.

Unfortunately, the medical community did not take Gershwin's symptoms very seriously. He was often approached with little sympathy because he was thought of as an attention-seeking hypochondriac (a person who is abnormally anxious about their health). Now, we can see that Gershwin's death was clearly natural and not psychosomatic. Dr. Gregory D. Sloop, now a retired pathologist, suggests that Gershwin's tumor "may have been slow-growing and treatable, even with the technology of the time." Microscope slides taken from Gershwin's brain display "tumor cells [that] lack the shape and characteristics of a malignant tumor." 

If Gershwin was given an earlier and accurate diagnosis and proper treatment, he might have lived longer to compose more masterpieces!

Read more about Gershwin and his diagnosis here.