[Possibilities and limits of retrospective diagnoses. Pathobiografical notes on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's diseases...

On December 5th, 1791, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart died from an acute febrile disease which had been accompanied by painful tumefactions around his hands and feet. The official diagnosis 'hitziges Frieselfieber' (severe military fever) cannot be decoded or translated into modern medical terms. Hypotheses which assert either a wilful or an erroneous poisoning with mercuric chloride have not been corroborated. Innumerable diverging retrospective diagnoses have been made by physicians during the 19th and 20th centuries. In this essay, we give a pathobiografical description of Mozart's three severe diseases from which he suffered as a boy: When traveling through Europe with his parents and his sister to give many exhausting concerts Wolfgang Amadé fell ill with an Erythema nodosum (1762), an abdominal typhus (1765), and with smallpox (1767). With regard to the 24 years between 1767 and 1791, however, we don't have much evidence for the suspicion that Mozart has had severe acute or chronic diseases as a grown-up. He may have been physically robust, but mentally he was rather sensitive. In his letters, Mozart sometimes portrayed a temporary bad state of health in order to illustrate his inconvenient emotional and/or financial situation. Up to November 18, 1791, Mozart's creativity was unbroken. His death came unexpectedly after an illness of 15 days.