YOU ARE IN WITH SOME MIGHTY FINE COMPANY...ARTISTS, MUSICIANS, POLITICIANS.

Gaius Marius, a Roman general and statesman, according to Plutarch died of the disease in 86 BC.[20]
Flavius Constantius III, a co-emperor of the Western Roman Empire, died of pleurisy according to Sidonius Apollinaris on 2 September 421 AD.[21]
Charlemagne, known as the father of Europe for reuniting much of the Roman Empire, died in 814 of pleurisy.[22]
Hernán Cortés died on 2 December 1547, from a case of pleurisy at the age of 62.
Catherine de' Medici, sometimes described as a "wife of one King and mother of three others", died from pleurisy in January 1589 at age 69.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Renaissance composer died in 1594 from pleurisy in Rome, Italy.

Benjamin Franklin developed fever and chest pain in 1790 at the age of 84. He spent ten days in bed having severe cough and difficulty breathing. He died after an abscess in his lungs burst from what is believed to be a case of pleurisy.

Francis Scott Key died in 1843 at the home of his daughter Elizabeth Howard in Baltimore from pleurisy.

William Wordsworth, the English poet, died of pleurisy aged 80 on 23 April 1850.

Dominic Savio, Italian Saint, became ill and died in March 1857 at the age of 14 possibly from pleurisy.

Tad Lincoln, the fourth and youngest son of Abraham Lincoln, had difficulty breathing when lying down and had to sleep sitting in a chair, and probably died of pleuristic attack, which was believed to be tubercular in origin, in Chicago in 1871 at age 18.


Mahatma Gandhi suffered from pleurisy during the First World War, while he was in London.

Enrico Caruso was struggling with pleurisy in the winter of 1920-1921, which contributed to his premature death.

Rudolph Valentino, an international movie star, died in August 1926 from pleurisy at age 31.

Alvin Kraenzlein was the first athlete to win four Olympic titles in a single event at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. He suffered from bouts of pleurisy at the end of 1927 and died from a related complication early 1928 at the age of 51.

Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet, became ill with pleurisy and died of related causes in 1928 at age 87.

Anna Pavlova, one of the world's most famous ballerinas, died unexpectedly of pleurisy at age 49 at the Hotel des Indes in The Hague in Jamuary 1931.

Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., a Broadway impresario, who was credited with staging several hit musicals including Show Boat (1927), died on July 22, 1932 of pleurisy after a lung infection at age 65.

Kenji Miyazawa, a Japanese poet and writer, suffered from chronic pleurisy and died of pneumonia in September 1933 at age 37.

Sir Robert Chesebrough, inventor of Vaseline, suffered pleurisy in his 50s and is said to have treated it by rubbing his whole body with petroleum jelly.

Colonel Edward Mandell House died on March 28, 1938 in New York City, following a bout with pleurisy. The Colonel was President Woodrow Wilson's advisor, particularly in the area of foreign affairs. Paris Peace Conference.

King George V of the United Kingdom suffered from pleurisy in his later life.

Carson McCullers, author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, was diagnosed with influenza and pleurisy in 1944.

Ringo Starr, former Beatles drummer, had chronic-pleurisy at age 13 in 1953.

Basil Sydney, the British actor died of the condition in 1968.

Ken Griffey, Jr., an American professional baseball player, complained of soreness in the chest and after a chest x-ray was diagnosed with pleurisy in April, 2007…

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Have you reflected upon how your epitaph should read?