A team of Polish scientists, who applied modern technology to examine Chopin’s heart, which has been stored in a jar of what appears to be cognac for almost 170 years, believe that they are finally close to determining what actually caused the untimely death of one of the greatest musicians who ever lived.
“We didn’t open the jar, but from the state of the heart we can say, with high probability, that Chopin suffered from tuberculosis while the complication pericarditis was probably the immediate cause of his death,” professor Michael Witt of the Polish Academy of Sciences told the Observer.
“I am quite sure we now know what killed Chopin,” he added.
The diagnosis is the latest and most conclusive attempt to resolve the long-running dispute over the likely cause of Chopin’s slow decline and death at the early age of 39.
READ MORE: Mozart exhibition set to open at Moscow's Pushkin art museum
Already on his deathbed in Paris in 1849 Paris, Chopin, who suffered from taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive, requested that his heart, which he saw as a symbol of his living soul, be cut out of his body and entombed in his native Poland.
Except for his heart, which is kept inside a pillar in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, Frederic Chopin’s body is buried at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
