"Darrell Acree" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's premature death, the subject of speculation for
>more than 200 years, may have been caused not by rheumatic fever, heart
>attack or poisoning by court composer Antonio Salieri, but by eating
>tainted pork chops.

I read that article myself.  While most know it wasn't Saleri's hand
involved in Mozart's death, there still is a good deal of mystery what
did kill Mozart.  But I don't believe it was tainted pork chops.

For those unfamiliar with the details:  around mid Nov 1791 after a concert
at his Masonic Lodge, Mozart became very ill:  fever involving papura and
swelling of his limbs, followed by severe noctural vomiting and colic.  He
was bed ridden from the earliest onset of symptoms (making very unlikely
that he worked on the Requiem at all during this period); and it was
impossible to move him.  Eyewitnesses said later that he did seem to rally,
but then he took a sudden drastic turn for the worse, dying by Dec 6th
1791.

Peter J. Davies, a British physician, comprehensively researched Mozart's
lifelong history of illnesses and published his findings in his book,
Mozart in Person:  His Character and Health (Westport:  Greenwood Press,
1989).  Dr. Davies refutes the feeble theory that Salieri poisoned Mozart,
and in his diagnosis concerning the cause of death he accounts for Mozart's
suspicions about poisoning.

Briefly, Dr. Davies's diagnosis is this:  Mozart suffered from recurring
streptococcal infections.  In 1791, he again became infected, but this time
it was complicated by the Schonlein-Henoch Syndrome, an immune reaction
involving the small blood vessels and resulting in rash, joint pain or
polyarthritis, gastrointestinal involvement, swelling or edema, and kidney
failure.  Kidney failure, besides being the ultimate cause of Mozart's
death, very likely also prompted his false sense of reality concerning the
alleged poisoning.  Mozart scholars, such as H.C. Robbins Landon, have
accepted Dr. Davies's diagnosis as the final word.

Hope this helps!

Kim Patrick Clow <[log in to unmask]