Any good stories of once-gifted leaders, philosophers, scientists...

Any good stories of once-gifted leaders, philosophers, scientists, or other persons of statues becoming retarded due to senility or an accident or something? I suddenly have a morbid interest in hearing such stories.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_III_of_the_United_Kingdom#Later_life
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I wouldn't necessarily say he was super gifted, but you had General Joseph Wheeler, who was a pretty good cavalry general for the CSA in the American Civil War, and later was rehabilitated, re-joining the northern dominated American army post-war.

And during the Spanish American war, at the age of 61, he took command of a cavalry division (He was Teddy Roosevelt's boss, in fact), and was in command of one of the first battles of the war, Las Guasimas. Anyway, he was getting the upper hand, and shouted to exhort his troops

>Let's go boys! We've got the damn Yankees on the run again!

Marx died poor, Nietzsche went insane.

I said gifted.

What a faggot.

Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer's

Gaius Marius was old, but also ill, both physically and mentally. He had put on weight, was probably suffering from the high blood pressure which often goes with increasing age and weight, and he had extremely erratic behaviour, as was shown by the sacking of Ostia, while it attempted to welcome him. Beesley gives the opinion that by this time Gaius Marius was insane and it is saddening but very tempting to go down that road. The most charitable description of his behaviour is that he had become senile. He had certainly changed completely from the bluff and easy-going man who had been so popular. He had always been a man who found it impossible to delegate, believing that nobody could do anything so well as he could. Hence his later behaviour and jealousies towards Sulla, when the senate decided that Marius was too old for command. Since then, his belief that he was all-important, all-powerful, had reached dangerous levels, and was about to be unleashed on Rome.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_III_of_the_United_Kingdom#Later_life

George III had a litany of health problems later in his life including blindness and dementia. After he had suffered from severe confusion in 1811 he willingly accepted a regency led by his son. He lived for another 9 years, and his condition steadily worsened to the point where he was so ravaged by dementia he no longer even knew who he was.

I've heard from a friend that some people think Plato went senile and that his later dialogues are a product of that.

Excellent example.

Hitler's descent into drug dependency may be another, depending on how willing you are to concede Hitler as a gifted politician earlier in his career.

Arthur Conan Doyle is another example -- not a powerful politician or anything, but he was considered a pretty good intellect, until he got snookered into spiritualism and, for fuck's sake, believing in fairies later in life.

He thought a fucking chicken was a man. He was senile way before that.

This may be the best example of a fucking legend falling so hard because of his mind slipping.

President Kekkonen I guess.
"From December 1980 onwards, Kekkonen suffered from an undisclosed disease that appeared to affect his brain functions, sometimes leading to delusional thoughts. He had begun to suffer occasional brief memory lapses as early as the autumn of 1972; they became more frequent during the late 1970s. Around the same time, Kekkonen's eyesight deteriorated so much that for his last few years in office, all of his official papers had to be typed in block letters. Kekkonen had also suffered from a failing sense of balance since the mid-1970s and from enlargement of his prostate gland since 1974. He was also subject to occasional violent headaches and suffered from diabetes from the autumn of 1979.[18]"

>Although Pétain had still been in good health for his age at the time of his imprisonment, by late 1947 his memory lapses were worsening and he was beginning to suffer from incontinence, sometimes soiling himself in front of visitors.[5] By January 1949 his lucid intervals were becoming fewer and fewer. On 3 March 1949 a meeting of the Council of Ministers (many of them "self-proclaimed heroes of the Resistance" in the words of biographer Charles Williams) had a fierce argument about a medical report recommending that he be moved to Val-de-Grâce (a military hospital in Paris), a measure to which Prime Minister Henri Queuille had previously been sympathetic. By May Pétain required constant nursing care, and he was often suffering from hallucinations, e.g. that he was commanding armies in battle, or that naked women were dancing around his room.[47] By the end of 1949, Pétain was completely senile, with only occasional moments of lucidity. He was also beginning to suffer from heart problems and was no longer able to walk without assistance. Plans were made for his death and funeral.[48]

>On 8 June 1951 President Auriol, informed that Pétain had little longer to live, commuted his sentence to confinement in hospital (the news was kept secret until after the elections on 17 June), but by then Pétain was too ill to be moved.[49] He died on the Île d'Yeu on 23 July 1951, at the age of 95,[45] and is buried in a Marine cemetery (Cimetière communal de Port-Joinville) near the prison.[24] Calls are sometimes made to re-inter his remains in the grave prepared for him in Verdun.[50]

>>President Kekkonen
>Don't let /pol/ hear about this guy...

I think it is interesting that Caesar was alive during Marius's terror. I wonder if fear of that ending was behind his expressed wish to die suddenly rather than live on too long, and his willingness to risk assassination towards the end of his life as he began to see the first evidences of at least a physical decline.

Thanks to a rare celestial alignment, Venus was to pass in front of the Sun, taking about six hours to cross the fiery disc. By recording the times of the start and end of the event from widely separated locations around the globe, trigonometry could be used to calculate the distance to Venus and the Sun. With that, Kepler's laws of planetary motion could be used to calculate the orbits of all the planets out to Saturn, the outermost known planet.

On 8 January 1761, HMS Seahorse left Portsmouth carrying Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, bound for Bencoolen, Sumatra. Only two days out, a French frigate with twice the firepower caught them. The pitched battle left 11 English sailors dead, 37 more wounded, and the ship so badly damaged she had to return home.

Noble-blooded Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche observed the 1761 transit from Siberia, protected by armed Cossacks. He observed the 1769 transit from Baja California, while those around him were dying of typhus. He contracted the disease eight days after the successful observation but a week before he needed a critical lunar sighting to establish his longitude. Without it, the transit measurements would be useless.

Chappe d'Auteroche fought the fever to survive long enough to make the lunar observation. He was buried in the sun-baked soil of San José, the only astronomer to have seen both 18th-century transits from start to finish.

I don't understand. He doesn't sound crazy, just crazy dedicated.

Yeah, I got put on adderal at 6 which has fryed my dopamine system over the years on top of already having pretty severe exucutive function deficits,, serotonin system fucked by MDMA, and my indocannabinoid system doesn't work either, Severe depression yadayada. I'm still extremely gifted but I am incompetent. I was something like a prodigy.

user this thread is for amusing anecdotes about historical figures. You just rattled off a bunch of your health problems. At least tell an interesting story about your antics or something.

A few Roman emperors come to mind. Namely, Tiberius and Hadrian.

>Tiberius - Capable emperor and general who ran a fairly tight ship after ascending to the throne, noted for having a fair handed rule. Until Sejanus tried to plot against him. Then he became a total recluse who locked himself on an island and drowned himself in partying and debauchery

>Hadrian - A brilliant emperor whose interests encompass history, philosophy, architecture, politics, art, and literature. He presided over some of Rome's most stable years at its peak. But as he got older he became more bitter, paranoid, and depressed to the point he attempted suicide several times.

Newton, though he was always just kind of an autistic weirdo I think.

Goya the artist moved into a place that was smelting lead and lost his mind from the lead poisoning for a while
the art he made at the time is boss though

Sorta gifted

maybe as an actor
oh wait...

Didn't Doyle get suckered into that shit because of his wife or the death of his wife?

Marx died very wealthy actually.

>When Shaka's mother Nandi died, the monarch ordered a massive outpouring of grief including mass executions, forbidding the planting of crops or the use of milk, and the killing of all pregnant women and their husbands

Bit like Trump then?

ba-bum-tss

>Until Sejanus tried to plot against him. Then he became a total recluse who locked himself on an island

But he had retreated to Capri before Seianus's plot -- it was Tiberius's absence from Rome that let Seianus get away with it for awhile.

That matches my memory, but it has been a long time since I read about Doyle's decline.

Let me know when Trump murders half the Senate and we can talk about the comparison.

But essentially, no, Marius, a career soldier and politician losing his mind as he tried to cling to power for one last hurrah doesn't really resemble the outsider who staged a surprise "hostile takeover" of a political party and won an election using weird tactics that totally broke the mold for how elections are won.