"Widespread and unchecked until the discovery of penicillin, syphilis was a scourge that accounted for many premature deaths, and several composers are known or strongly believed to have contracted it, including [Robert] Schumann. Other famous [composer] syphilitics were Franz Schubert, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Gaspare Spontini, Gaetano Donizetti, Mikhail Glinka, Bedrich Smetana, Hugo Wolf, Frederick Delius, Edward Macdowell, and Scott Joplin, and their symptoms ranged from lesions and fevers to blindness, deafness, dementia, and death."
http://www.allmusic.com/blog/post/classical-composers-and-their-maladies
Musicians haven’t changed much over the years! :)
Glad to see that P. D. Q. Bach is not on the list.