Pork cutlets may have killed Mozart

Forget rheumatic fever, kidney stones, heart disease, pneumonia and even poisoning - what may have really killed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were pork cutlets.

The latest theory about the 35-year-old composer’s untimely death on December 5, 1791, in Vienna suggests the culprit was probably trichinosis.

It is an illness with an incubation period of up to 50 days, usually caused by eating undercooked pork, says Dr Jan V Hirschmann of Puget Sound Veterans Affairs Medical Centre in Seattle, USA.

Hirschmann offers as damning evidence an innocuous little letter Mozart wrote to his wife 44 days before his illness began, as documented in a 1999 biography. ‘‘What do I smell? ... pork cutlets! Che Gusto (What a delicious taste). I eat to your health,’’ Mozart wrote.