The Mozarts, Who They Were Volume 2. Diego Minoia
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a dozen years earlier, evidently the controversial aftermath had not completely subsided and Leopold does not hold back from giving his opinion on the matter: French music, all of it, is worth nothing while the German musicians present in Paris or whose printed compositions were widespread in the French capital (Schobert, Eckard, Honauer, etc.) were helping to change the musical taste of their French colleagues. Some of the main composers operating in Paris, Leopold writes, had brought their published compositions to Mozarts while Wolfgang himself had just delivered 4 Sonatas for harpsichord with violin accompaniment marked in the Mozart catalog as K6 and K7 (those dedicated to the Delfina Victoire Marie Louise Thérèse, daughter of King Louis XV) and K8 and K9 (those dedicated to the Countess of Tessè). We will speak more about the compositions published in Paris by Wolfgang (but composed in the previous months, not without the help of his father) after completing the information on the stay of the Mozarts in the French capital. In the meantime, Leopold figures out, and does not fail to highlight it to his interlocutors from Salzburg, the clamor he expects will provoke the Sonatas by his son, especially considering the age of the author.
Nor is he afraid that Wolfgang could be put in crisis by any public proofs of his abilities, proofs that had already been faced and overcome not only at the level of executive virtuosity (execution, sight reading, transposition into other tones, improvisation, etc. .) but also, according to what he says, at the level of composition when he was put to the test in writing a bass and the violin accompaniment of a minuet. Little Wolfgang's progress was so rapid that his father imagined that, upon returning to Salzburg, he could take up court service as a musician.
Nannerl also performs with precision the most difficult pieces that are submitted to her, but for her Leopold does not make grandiose projects: she is a woman and the prejudices of the time, fully shared by Leopold Mozart, make her at best a performer with prospects of living by giving lessons to the offspring of wealthy Salzburg families.
In the letter of February 22, Leopold Mozart announces the death of Countess van Eyck to Hagenauer, who had been hosting the whole family in her palace for months (no one bothered to prick the soles of her feet to make sure she was really dead, Leopold notes) and the disease that had affected Wolfgang: a sore throat with a cold so strong that it caused inflammation, high fever and the production of pleghm that he was not completely able expel.
The death of the Countess forced the Mozarts to look for a new place to live and Grimm found them an apartment in Rue de Luxembourg. On the occasion of little Wolfgang's illness we discover one of Leopold Mozart's characteristics, namely his competence (empirical but also based on reading and experience) in the medical field. In the correspondence, in this case as on other occasions, we find the treatments that he himself administered to family members on the basis of personal diagnoses or, for the most serious cases, on the indications of the doctors consulted.
First he made Wolfgang get out of bed and walked him back and forth around the room while, to bring down the fever, he repeatedly administered small doses of Pulvis antispasmodicus Hallensis (Halle's antispasmodic powder). This medicine, which took its name from the German city of Halle (in Saxony, near Leipzig), was based on Assa fetida (a resin of Persian origin), Castoreum of Russia (glandular secretion produced by the beaver in the period of the "scrub", sold at a high price so that it was often falsified or replaced by the less precious one imported from Canada), valerian (a plant rich in flavonoids still used today to promote sleep and reduce anxious phenomena), purple digitalis (plant containing active ingredients with effects on decompensation heart), sweet mercury (85% mercury oxide and 15% muriatic acid) and sugar. That concoction, whether it was effective or not, certainly did not kill the boy and probably helped Wolfgang to recover within four days.
For safety, however, Leopold, who cared obsessively about his son's health (an illness would have put projects and earnings at risk and the four days of forced rest, he calculated that they could have earned an extra 12 Louis of gold), also consulted a German friend, a certain Herrenschwand, doctor of the Swiss Guards who protected the King at Versailles.
Because the medicus only showed up twice to visit Wolfgang (Leopold writes it as if his doctor friend had neglected his duties, but evidently the disease was not so serious as to require daily visits) he thought it best to integrate the treatments with a some Aqua laxativa Viennensis (Viennese laxative water), a popular medicine certainly less dangerous as it is composed of Senna (Plant of Indian origin with laxative effects), Manna (extracted from the sap of the ash, with emollient and expectorant properties, slightly laxative), Creme of tartar (tartaric acid with natural leavening properties) mixed in six parts water.
Medicine in the 18th century
Mortality in the second half of the 18th century in European cities was four times higher than today. Vienna, with a population of around 270,000, had a death rate of 43 per thousand. The main reason was the large number of diseases present at the time, such as smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever and, in children, diarrhea. In addition, chronic infections such as tuberculosis and syphilis increased the death toll.
Life expectancy in the second half of the 18th century, especially in cities, was 32 years. The main reason was the high infant mortality rate. In the years 1762 to 1776, the average mortality rate of children under the age of two was 49% and at least 62% of children died within the fifth year. The main cause was diarrhea due to poor hygiene and inadequate infantile nutrition. Breastfeeding by mothers was not popular, so middle and upper-class women resorted to nurses for their children, who belonged to the lower classes and, often, were themselves carriers of disease.
Another method used was baby food, consisting of bread boiled in water or beer with the addition of sugar.
Wolfgang Mozart possessed erroneous notions about it, as evidenced by a letter written to his father in June 1783 on the occasion of the birth of his first child, Raimund Leopold, in which it is highlighted that he was against breastfeeding. He would have liked the baby to be fed only baby food, as it was for him and his sister.
Fortunately he gave in to the insistence of his mother-in-law and the son was entrusted to the care of a nurse even if, unfortunately, it was ineffective, and the baby lived only four weeks.
The therapies used at the time were poorly effective.
Gradually the notions deriving from medieval medicine were discarded, but in their place there were few alternatives.
For example, quinine in the form of Peruvian bark was used against malaria; opium was the only known analgesic, while mercury was used against syphilis.
Furthermore, the theory of mood disorder of the disease was still in vogue, which provided the removal of body fluids in order to expel bad moods and thus restore balance.
Therefore emetics, laxatives, enemas and bloodletting were widely used.
During the 18th century, medical techniques were used that today make us laugh, such as "tobacco smoke enemas", which were practiced in particular to reanimate drowned people (in London, but also in Venice, along the river or canals, in the apothecaries rather than in the parishes, at the piers and harbors, boxes with the equipment necessary to practice this therapy, just as is the case today for the defibrillators used in the case of cardiac arrest).
Leopold Mozart was probably always interested in medical treatments, the newest remedies and, more generally, scientific news, becoming aware of them during his long stay in London during the European Grand Tour.
Given the scarcity of official medicine results, "do-it-yourself" remedies were widely used, and as we have seen, the Mozart family was by no means exempt.
Here is a table of the most used medicines at the time:
- margravia powder (magnesium carbonate, mistletoe, etc.). Originally produced by the Berlin chemist Andreas Margraff (1709-1782);
- black powder, also called Pulvis Epilepticus Niger (seeds of croton, scammonea, peony, animal products, etc.). By far the most used remedy as it contained strong laxatives. It was used against epilepsy and also contained dried ground worms;
- scabiosa tea;
- rhubarb root;
- elderberry tea;
-