One of the doctors present at the heart surgery Benjamin Britten underwent three years before his death has called claims the composer had syphilis "ludicrous".
The claims that Britten's death was hastened by the sexually transmitted disease come from a new biography by Paul Kildea, which suggests that when the presiding cardiothoracic surgeon opened Britten up in the summer of 1973 he found "the aorta was riddled with tertiary syphilis".
The suggestion made in the book, published next week to mark the composer's centenary year, is that Britten caught the infection from his long-term partner, tenor Peter Pears, but never knew he had it. The hypothesis is that Pears carried the infection but remained free from symptoms.
According to the biography, the surgeon, Donald Ross, confided his secret diagnosis of syphilis to another doctor, Hywel Davies, who is the source for Kildea's suggestions.
But Dr Edward Sumner, one of the anaesthetists present at the operation, has told the Guardian he remembers events "vividly" and there was "no suggestion that there was any syphilitic involvement whatsoever … I remember looking into the aorta". He said: "The whole thing is ludicrous and there is no evidence whatsoever that he had syphilis."
"People were tested for syphilis," Sumner added, referring to the then commonplace Wassermann test for the disease, which had been developed in the early 20th century. "He would have been tested serologically [for infections in the blood serum] before the operation. These things were important, not least to check if there was any infection which could have been passed on to medical staff."
Sumner remembers the difficulty staff had in getting Britten off the bypass machine after his aortic valve replacement. "He was quite hard to get off bypass; the heart was clearly very weakened. He never really recovered from it. And I remember him waking up with a stroke, and everyone being devastated by that."
Earlier this week, another doctor who cared for Britten from 1973 until his death in 1976, cardiologist Dr Michael Petch, told the Guardian it was "extremely unlikely" the composer had syphilis.
