Dr J.W. Lee: "... among WHO's highest priorities"

Dr Jong-Wook Lee, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), signed in 2003 this comment on the inside cover of Icons of Europe's biography, "Chopin and The Swedish Nightingale":

"The fight against the great infectious killers - HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria - must remain among WHO's highest priorities."

The founders of Icons of Europe have, as authors and publishers of the biography, dedicated its income to the fight against tuberculosis.

We are a partner of the

About Chopin's illness

Chopin may have contracted TB at an early age.  Three months after Jenny Lind met Chopin, The Times reported that she raised funds for a new eastern wing of the Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, London through her morning concert at Her Majesty's Theatre on 31 July 1848.

Chopin writes later in a letter of 22 November 1848:  "Sir J. Clark the Queen's doctor came once to see me".  It must have taken Jenny Lind's royal connections to arrange that.  Sir James (1788-1870) was a specialist in pulmonary consumption on which he wrote a paper in 1835.  He had written a paper on "The Influence of Climate in Chronic Diseases" in 1829.

According to the Royal College of Physicians:  "In 1834 he [Dr Clark] obtained, via recommendation by the King of the Belgians, the appointment of physician to the Duchess of Kent.  The appointment involved the medical care of Princess Victoria.   Accordingly, this led to a large increase in his business and reputation.   Upon Queen Victoria's accession to the throne in 1837, Clark was appointed the Queen's physician in ordinary, and was created baronet."