THE ARTS

Mozart Theory: In the ongoing debate about the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a British physician and pharmacologist now advances the theory that Mozart was inadvertently poisoned by doctors administering antimony and possibly mercury, which were used as medicines in 18th-Century Vienna. Dr. Ian James of London’s Royal Free Hospital presented his findings to the British Assn. for Performing Arts Medicine. However, Dr. Peter J. Davies, an Australian physician who has written extensively about Mozart’s ailments and death, said the antimony theory is “not new and not tenable.” Davies believes the composer died from complications of a streptococcal infection.