Death of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Glass of Unboiled Water

The Glass of Unboiled Water

If Tchaikovsky did contract cholera, it is impossible to know precisely when or how he became infected. Newspapers printed accounts given by confused relatives of Tchaikovsky's drinking a glass of unboiled water at Leiner's restaurant. Modest, by contrast, suggests that his brother drank the fateful glass at Modest's apartment during lunch on Thursday. "t was right in the middle of our conversation about the medication he had taken that he poured a glass of water and took a sip from it. The water was unboiled. We were all frightened: he alone was indifferent to it and told us not to worry."

The incubation period for cholera is between one and three days according to some authorities, and from two hours to five days according to others. Tchaikovsky reportedly started showing symptoms early Thursday morning. If the one-to-three-day interval is taken as 24 to 72 hours, the latest the composer could have been infected would have been Wednesday morning, earlier than either the dinner at Leiner's that evening or lunch at Modest's the following afternoon.

The possibility of unboiled water available at a restaurant such as Leiner's was a surprise to some. "We find it extremely strange that a good restaurant could have served unboiled water during an epidemic", wrote a reporter for the newspaper Son of the Fatherland. "There exists, as far as we can recollect, a binding decree that commercial establishments, eating houses, restaurants, etc., should have boiled water". Poznansky suggests the same lack of credibility holds true for Modest's story.

Newspaper reporters were not the only ones questioning these accounts. Diaghilev recalls: "Various myths soon sprang up about the death of Tchaikovsky. Some said he caught cholera by drinking a glass of tap water at the Restaurant Leiner. Certainly, we used to see Piotr Ilyitch eating there almost every day, but nobody at that time drank unboiled water, and it seemed inconceivable to us that Tchaikovsky should have done so".