Oh, duh, it just occurred to me that Fritz had this over-the-top tobacco habit, which may have actually brought on the heart failure.
Specifically, Spanish snuff. He took so much snuff that his coat was constantly covered in it, like everyone who saw him commented on it, it was said that you could barely approach him without sneezing from all the snuff dust he was covered in, and even he repeatedly acknowledged that his habit and total lack of hygiene were disgusting. Poignantly, he told Catt he was slightly less "swinish" when his mother was alive, but now there was no one to care about his appearance. :/
This is how addicted he was: "Catt, we're going to read some French drama aloud. When we get to the end of this bit, I'm going to take a pinch of snuff. Then we read until the end of the scene. Then we pause for my next snuff break." This was his regular reading MO. There are multiple instances of this in Catt's memoirs, which are based on the very detailed diary he kept. (He was keeping a detailed diary of everything Fritz said in that first year largely so as to take notes and limit his chances of saying the wrong thing. Yes, conversations with Fritz were that high-stress exam you had to study for. ;) )
So anyway, lots and lots of tobacco consumption for decades. Now, membership in an at-risk demographic is not the same thing as a diagnosis, but sometimes, when the party in question has been dead for hundreds of years, it lends credence to your totally made up headcanon. ;)
Which leads me to wonder how much of the several years of coughing was asthma, which I always see it attributed to, and how much might have been heart failure. The cough appears to have gotten drastically worse in that last year, to the point where visitors reported it was hard to have a conversation with him; breathlessness while lying down is a symptom of congestive heart failure; and the only mention of phlegm that I'm remembering is the coughing fit that led to his last words. (Of course, that could also be a productive asthma cough.)
Other things I wonder about: one of the two classes of health problems that arguably caused him the most distress throughout his life was digestive. (The other being gout.) His doctors, for decades, unanimously thought it was caused by his eating habits. Fritz disagreed, vehemently. At least one modern biographer has suggested porphyria, which we know ran on both his mother's and father's side of the family (and we also know they were first cousins, sigh, which means all those recessive diseases are coming out of the woodwork in the kids) and at least one sibling had it.
We have numerous quotes from primary sources saying that Fritz constantly ate too much too fast, got an upset stomach, and then wondered why. (And because he didn't agree on the whole cause and effect thing, kept bolting his food.) He also insisted on spicy and strong-tasting food. We also have Fritz saying he suffered from disorderly cravings, "like a pregnant woman."
It's not terribly unlikely that both were responsible. He probably insisted there was no connection with his eating because he had digestive upsets even when he was eating slowly and sparingly, because porphyria; everyone, including him, could tell that he was abusing his stomach and not fully in control of his eating habits. No matter how many times he was told to get his diet under control, from at least the 1750s until about August 1786, he refused.
What else do we know? Both Fritz and Wilhelmine report being underfed by FW. Not just poor quality food, but not nearly enough food at times. In prison, Fritz wrote to her, "Starvation for starvation, I prefer Küstrin to living with Dad." (This was before Katte's execution, when Fritz still thought everything was going to turn out all right.)
Disordered eating as an adult after surviving years of food withholding as a child? That's a thing.
Re: Fritz's death
Specifically, Spanish snuff. He took so much snuff that his coat was constantly covered in it, like everyone who saw him commented on it, it was said that you could barely approach him without sneezing from all the snuff dust he was covered in, and even he repeatedly acknowledged that his habit and total lack of hygiene were disgusting. Poignantly, he told Catt he was slightly less "swinish" when his mother was alive, but now there was no one to care about his appearance. :/
This is how addicted he was: "Catt, we're going to read some French drama aloud. When we get to the end of this bit, I'm going to take a pinch of snuff. Then we read until the end of the scene. Then we pause for my next snuff break." This was his regular reading MO. There are multiple instances of this in Catt's memoirs, which are based on the very detailed diary he kept. (He was keeping a detailed diary of everything Fritz said in that first year largely so as to take notes and limit his chances of saying the wrong thing. Yes, conversations with Fritz were that high-stress exam you had to study for. ;) )
So anyway, lots and lots of tobacco consumption for decades. Now, membership in an at-risk demographic is not the same thing as a diagnosis, but sometimes, when the party in question has been dead for hundreds of years, it lends credence to your totally made up headcanon. ;)
Which leads me to wonder how much of the several years of coughing was asthma, which I always see it attributed to, and how much might have been heart failure. The cough appears to have gotten drastically worse in that last year, to the point where visitors reported it was hard to have a conversation with him; breathlessness while lying down is a symptom of congestive heart failure; and the only mention of phlegm that I'm remembering is the coughing fit that led to his last words. (Of course, that could also be a productive asthma cough.)
Other things I wonder about: one of the two classes of health problems that arguably caused him the most distress throughout his life was digestive. (The other being gout.) His doctors, for decades, unanimously thought it was caused by his eating habits. Fritz disagreed, vehemently. At least one modern biographer has suggested porphyria, which we know ran on both his mother's and father's side of the family (and we also know they were first cousins, sigh, which means all those recessive diseases are coming out of the woodwork in the kids) and at least one sibling had it.
We have numerous quotes from primary sources saying that Fritz constantly ate too much too fast, got an upset stomach, and then wondered why. (And because he didn't agree on the whole cause and effect thing, kept bolting his food.) He also insisted on spicy and strong-tasting food. We also have Fritz saying he suffered from disorderly cravings, "like a pregnant woman."
It's not terribly unlikely that both were responsible. He probably insisted there was no connection with his eating because he had digestive upsets even when he was eating slowly and sparingly, because porphyria; everyone, including him, could tell that he was abusing his stomach and not fully in control of his eating habits. No matter how many times he was told to get his diet under control, from at least the 1750s until about August 1786, he refused.
What else do we know? Both Fritz and Wilhelmine report being underfed by FW. Not just poor quality food, but not nearly enough food at times. In prison, Fritz wrote to her, "Starvation for starvation, I prefer Küstrin to living with Dad." (This was before Katte's execution, when Fritz still thought everything was going to turn out all right.)
Disordered eating as an adult after surviving years of food withholding as a child? That's a thing.
Fuck you, FW. Feed your damn kids.