Description
Book Synopsis
The real key to this distinctive book lies in its subtitle. The book's core is an astonishingly detailed medical history of Mozart, spanning his entire life, compiled with great ingenuity and skill from varied and sometimes surprising sources. Davies, a British physician specializing in internal medicine, has already established his credentials with a series of substantial journal articles concerning Mozart's final illness and death. Here he expands and consolidates his research, offering a presumably definitive account of the intricate cluster of ailments and disabilities, some stretching back over many years, that eventually contributed to Mozart's early death. After reading Davies, one wonders not at Mozart's early end but, rather, how he survived for so long. . . . Davies advances unexpected medical causes for some Mozartean peculiarities of behavior, and surely these ideas will provoke much interest among Mozart scholars. For college or university libraries that already ha
Table of Contents
Foreword by Stanley Sadie Introduction by Erna Schwerin Medical History Ancestry, Birth, and Early Childhood The First Recorded Illnesses The Grand Tour Illnesses, 1763-1766 The Smallpox Epidemic in 1767 Eighteenth-Century Medicine The Illnesses, 1770-1783 The Illnesses, 1784-1790 The Last Year, 1791 Lifestyles Religious Beliefs and Attitudes The Eternal Feminine Mozartean Economics Extravagance, Generosity, and Debts Mozart's Gambling Enigmatic Personality Mozart's Personality Pastimes and Stresses Mozart's Cyclothymic Disorder Death and Aftermath Terminal Illness and Burial Mozart Was Not Poisoned The Cause of Mozart's Death Bibliography Index
