Strep Throat Killed Mozart?

Random by today’s news standards, but the cause of death for one of music’s most influential composers is being probed…again. What really killed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? The musical genius died at the ripe old age of 35, and some people are suggesting that strep throat may have been the cause. More on the story below.

According to Reuters, research done at the University of Amsterdam is suggesting his death wasn’t as cut and dry as his death certificate suggests. The official ruling of Mozart’s cause of death was hitziges Frieselfieber, or “heated miliary fever,” referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds. Now a study from the Annals of Internal Medicine, tells a different story.

“Our findings suggest that Mozart fell victim to an epidemic of strep throat infection that was contracted by many Viennese people in Mozart’s month of death, and that Mozart was one of several persons in that epidemic that developed a deadly kidney complication,” researcher Richard Zegers, of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, told Reuters Health.”

Mozart died in the winter of 1791 in Vienna. In his last days of life he was in terrible pain. He suffered from severe swelling, “malaise,” back pain and a rash, consistent with a strep infection leading to kidney inflammation known as glomerulonephritis. Hearing stuff like this makes me thankful for modern medicine. If only someone could have given him some decent antibiotics!

What do you think of the Mozart strep throat theory?