summary
Neurosyphilis is a neuropsychiatric disorder which can be severely incapacitating and even fatal, but which has been associated historically with genius and artistic inspiration. We describe an artist with neurologic and psychiatric complaints who owed not only his disease symptoms, but possibly also his artistic talent to neurosyphilis. Gradually, our patient developed all the clinical symptoms of neurosyphilis. In addition, he turned out to suffer from aids. At a late stage, the clinical picture was complicated by opportunistic infections and epilepsy. Although the patient
received the best possible treatment, he ultimately died from opportunistic infections.