Fryderyc-François Chopin (1810-1849): music and malady.

Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola in Western Poland. He had no formal piano tuition and one could say that his skill as a pianist was self-taught, close to a miracle. All his compositions included the piano; this was not a restriction for him.

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa (1864-1901): artistic genius and medical curiosity.

Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi in South West France. His parents were first cousins; this consanguineous marriage was responsible for his ugly deformities. Lautrec's life in Montmartre became the setting for much of his art and for his deliberate slow self-destruction.

Sir Hans Adolf Krebs (1900-81), pioneer of modern medicine, architect of intermediary metabolism.

Krebs was born in Hildesheim (North Germany) and graduated (MD) from the University of Munich in 1923. He was assistant to Otto Warburg (1926-30) who taught tissue slicing and manometry which Krebs used to complete his three great works: The Detoxification of Ammonia (Freiburg im Breisgau 1933), The Degradation of Foods to provide Energy for Life (Sheffield 1937) and Gluconeogenesis (Oxford 1963). He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in 1947, Nobel Laureate in 1953 and KBE in 1958.