I used to think Nietzsche suffered from syphilis, which he got from a prostitute. The parasites slowly progressed to his brain and led to a dramatic decline, madness, and death.

I heard this from a university professor I admired. He mentioned it while making an introduction to The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, which was our topic in a series of lectures.

I read Nietzsche’s books in awe and felt something was not right. I couldn’t fathom why such a person would reach out to a prostitute. It didn’t make sense. I could imagine him being in celibacy (or marriage, which was not the case), but not this.

I read somewhere that he did once visit a brothel, but was so shy that nothing happened. I was very inclined to believe that.

Still, I believed what I heard from my professor, because he was an old-school intellectual, a living encyclopedia, who dug deep into every matter he studied. I assumed he knew what he talked about.

Also, this wasn’t a crucial topic for me, and I didn’t research it properly. And, you know, intellectual laziness, even my own, naturally leans toward whatever comes from authority.

So, for like twenty years, I believed in the narrative that involves intercourse with a promiscuous person, syphilis, neurodegeneration, side effects of medications prescribed to deal with syphilis, and then a complete breakdown.

Much later, while doing research for a client, I finally looked into it properly and realized that the prostitute and syphilis story is pure speculation.

For more than a century, Nietzsche’s collapse was blamed on neurosyphilis. It seemed to fit: sudden mental breakdown, progressive dementia, paralysis, death in 1900. His doctor even recorded that diagnosis. But syphilis in the 19th century was a default for anything doctors couldn’t explain. Today, many scholars doubt it. They suggest a brain tumor, strokes, frontotemporal dementia, or a rare hereditary condition. Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, Friedrich's father, died of brain disease (probably a tumor, probably hereditary). In a letter to Carl von Gersdroff, 18 January 1876, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "My father died at age 36 due to encephalitis; it is likely that the same will soon happen to me."

I’m writing about this now because someone posted a photo of a poor, sick mule - emaciated, suffering, innocent - and it reminded me of Nietzsche. He was deeply moved by the cruelty to animals. In Turin, January 3, 1889, he saw a horse being whipped, rushed to embrace it, wept, and collapsed. That speaks a ton about him.

And what about the prostitute? Nothing. That part of the story was invented to make the syphilis account plausible. He got syphilis, right? So there must be a prostitute. In order to find evidence supporting this premise, some people go so far as to use the premise itself to justify the evidence. Too many "truths" are generated that way.