Long before the Beatles, which 19th century musician inspired the term '...omania'?

Quite rightly, Franz Liszt has been called the world's first rock star. The glamorous pianist toured the breadth of Europe. Wherever he went, Franz Liszt inspired delirium in starstruck fans ??- mostly women.

Liszt had a habit of making female fans do some crazy things. Women reportedly fought over handkerchiefs Liszt had used, or crafted his broken piano strings into bracelets. Before there was "merch," there were women pasting Liszt's likeness onto their brooches and cameos. Packed crowds stole cuttings of his hair, his coffee dregs ??- even his cigar butts.

Concert halls were pandemonium. Articulating the craze in 1844, Heinrich Hein penned the term "Lisztomania." He described it as a contagion in medical terms: "And what is the real cause of this phenomenon?... A physician whose speciality is the disorders of women and with whom I conversed as to the magic which our Liszt exercises on his public, smiled mysteriously and told many things of magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of contagion in an overheated hall."