Mozart's 140 causes of death

Every year the BMJ (British Medical Journal) publishes a "Christmas issue," with many nontraditional and lighthearted articles.  You can search and read some of the issue here.  I've selected three items to highlight at TYWKIWDBI.  The first one is a literature review by Lucien R Karhausen of the numerous medical and mental illnesses that have been attributed to the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

I have identified 140 (sometimes overlapping) possible causes of death, in addition to 85 other conditions. But Mozart died only once. Some causes are plausible, only few—maybe one, or maybe none of them—can be true, so most if not all of them are false...

Many authors have favoured the hypothesis of an acute condition such as influenza; staphylococcal, streptococcal, or meningococcal infection; various septicaemias; scarlatina or measles; typhoid or paratyphoid fevers; typhus; tuberculosis; trichinosis; and so on. Postinfectious glomerulonephritis was first proposed by Barraud in 1905. Schoental, an expert in microfungi, thought that Mozart died from mycotoxin poisoning. Drake, a neurosurgeon, proposed a diagnosis of subdural haematoma after a skull fracture identified on a cranium that is not Mozart’s. Ehrlich, a rheumatologist, believed he died from Behçet’s syndrome. Langegger, a psychiatrist, contended that he died from a psychosomatic condition [!!]. Little, a transplant surgeon, thought he could have saved Mozart by a liver transplant. Brown, a cardiologist, claimed he succumbed to endocarditis. On the basis of a translation error of Jahn’s biography of Mozart, Rappoport, a pathologist, thought Mozart died of cerebral haemorrhage. Ludewig, a pharmacologist, suggested poisoning or self poisoning by drinking wine adulterated with lead compounds. For some, Mozart manifested cachexia or hyperthyroidism, but for others it was obesity or hypothyroidism. Ludendorff, a psychiatrist, and her apostles, claimed in 1936 that Mozart had been murdered by the Jews, the Freemasons, or the Jesuits, and assassination is not excluded by musicologists like Autexier, Carr, and Taboga...

Lange-Eichbaum complained early in 1930 that too often pathography becomes a “historical game, a literary feuilleton, or a medical entertainment.” The motto of Mozart’s biography written by Nissen (Constanze Mozart’s second husband) was: de mortuis nil, nisi vere...

Most of the 27 psychiatric disorders attributed to Mozart result from disregarding or misquoting the criteria that demarcate normal from abnormal behaviour.  Some authors upgrade daily worries into paranoid ideas or anxiety neuroses; blues or genuine worries into depression; elation into hypomania; linguistic games into jargonophasia; wit into immature or manic behaviour or into a childish, psychotic other self; the dissonant harmonies of the Haydn quartets into Tourette’s syndrome; and, at the end of his life, a small shuddering into a convulsion... This has resulted in psychiatric narratives that blend an uninterrupted long tradition of defamation—the film Amadeus was one of the last public expressions of this tradition.

The image is of Mozart's unfinished Requiem.

I posted one "cause of death" (with a video clip from Amadeus) last fall.  Since I don't know when I'll be able to post a Mozart topic again, I can't resist asking "Why could no one ever find Mozart's teacher?"  (answer in the Comments...)