What happened when Friedrich Nietzsche collapsed in Turin in 1889?

In January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche collapsed in the streets of Turin, Italy, having completely lost control of his mental faculties. Following his collapse, he sent a series of bizarre but meaningful notes that prompted his friend, the theologian Franz Overbeck, to travel to Italy and bring him back to Basel.12

Nietzsche spent the final 11 years of his life in a state of total mental darkness. He was initially placed in an asylum in Basel before moving to Naumburg under his mother’s care, and finally to Weimar under the care of his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, until his death in 1900.21

While his breakdown was long attributed to tertiary syphilis, other medical theories have been proposed, including the degeneration of cerebral blood vessels and a retro-orbital meningioma—a tumor located behind the right eye.12