3. MOZART VS. STREP THROAT
When it comes to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's demise
, researchers don't have much to go on. After his death on December 5, 1791, the maestro landed in an unmarked Vienna grave. Since no one performed an autopsy when he died, researchers must reconstruct Mozart's end from eighteenth century accounts, which noted only the symptoms of his sudden illness: fever, rash, and extreme swelling.
That didn't discourage the authors of an epidemiological study
published in 2009 in the Annals of Internal Medicine
. They attempted to determine the most probable cause of the 35-year-old's death by looking at how everyone else in Vienna died. By analyzing the causes of death for 5,011 adults who died in November, December, and January of the same year as Mozart and the two years following, and pairing their findings with eyewitness accounts of Mozart's symptoms, they determined that, perhaps, an untreated streptococcal
infection could have led to Mozart's end. Untreated strep could have led to kidney failure and the fluid retention that reportedly made the sick composer unable to fit into his clothes or turn over in bed during his final days.