High levels of lead detected in authenticated locks of Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair suggest that the composer suffered from lead poisoning, which may have contributed to the ailments he suffered throughout his life, including deafness, according to new research.
In addition to hearing loss, the famous classical composer had recurring gastrointestinal problems throughout his life, experienced two attacks of jaundice, and faced severe liver disease.
Beethoven is believed to have died of liver and kidney disease at age 56. But the process of understanding the cause of his numerous health problems has been a much more complicated puzzle, one that even Beethoven himself hoped doctors could eventually solve.
The composer expressed his desire for his ailments to be studied and shared so that “as far as possible at least the world is reconciled with me after my death.”
An international team of researchers set out almost a decade ago to partially fulfill Beethoven’s wish by studying locks of his hair. Using DNA analysis, the team determined which ones truly belonged to the composer and which were fraudulent, and sequenced Beethoven’s genome by analyzing authenticated locks of it.
The findings, published in a March 2023 report, revealed that Beethoven had significant genetic risk factors for liver disease and a hepatitis B infection before his death. But the results did not provide any information about the underlying causes of his deafness, which began when he was 20, nor about his gastrointestinal problems.
Beethoven’s genome was made available to the public, inviting researchers from around the world to investigate outstanding questions about Beethoven’s health.
Meanwhile, scientists continue to figuratively go through the authenticated locks of Beethoven’s hair with a fine-toothed comb, uncovering surprising insights.
In addition to high concentrations of lead, the latest findings showed arsenic and mercury remaining trapped in the composer’s strands nearly 200 years after his death, according to a new letter published Monday in the journal Clinical Chemistry. And the insights could provide new windows not only into understanding Beethoven’s chronic health ailments, but also the complicated nuances of his life as a composer.
A tangled web reveals a clue
Christian Reiter, now retired deputy director of the Center for Forensic Medicine at the Medical University of Vienna, had previously studied the Hiller Lock, a long hair specimen attributed to Beethoven. He authored and published a 2007 article after determining that there were high levels of lead in the hair, and suggested that the lead could have contributed to the composer’s deafness and potentially his death.
In a turn, the Genomic sequencing study 2023. He discovered that the Hiller Lock did not belong to Beethoven, and was actually a sample of a woman’s hair. But at the time researchers did not test Beethoven’s newly authenticated hair samples for lead.
So the question remained: Did Beethoven suffer from lead poisoning?
An independent research team used two different methods to look for evidence of lead in two authenticated locks of Beethoven’s hair: the Bermann lock, estimated to have been cut between late 1820 and March 1827, and the Halm-Thayer lock, which Beethoven delivered personally. to the pianist Anton Halm in April 1826.
It was very common during Beethoven’s life for people to collect and preserve locks of hair from loved ones or famous people, said William Meredith, a Beethoven scholar and co-author of the 2023 genomic analysis and the latest study.
The most recent investigation detected incredibly high levels of lead in both samples: 64 times the level expected at the Bermann Lock and 95 times the level expected at the Halm-Thayer Lock.
“These levels are considered lead poisoning,” said the study’s senior author, Nader Rifai, a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and director of clinical chemistry at Boston Children’s Hospital. “If you walk into any emergency room in the United States with these levels, you will be admitted immediately and undergo chelation therapy.”
A statue of Ludwig van Beethoven stands outside the opera house in Hanover, Germany, Monday, Aug. 31, 2009. (Joerg Sarbach/AP Photo, File)
Beethoven’s diagnosis
Elevated levels of lead, such as those detected in Beethoven’s hair, “are commonly associated with gastrointestinal and kidney ailments and decreased hearing, but are not considered high enough to be the sole cause of death,” the authors wrote. of the study. Because researchers do not have hair samples from earlier in Beethoven’s life, it is impossible to understand when the lead poisoning began, Meredith said.
The study authors do not believe that lead poisoning was solely responsible for Beethoven’s death or deafness. But he experienced symptoms of lead poisoning throughout his life, including hearing loss, muscle cramps and kidney abnormalities, Rifai said.
Both locks also contained higher levels of arsenic and mercury, between 13 and 14 times the expected amount, according to the study.
Study co-author Paul Jannetto, an associate professor in the department of laboratory medicine and pathology and laboratory director at the Mayo Clinic, conducted the analysis of the samples and said he had never seen lead levels this high.
But Rifai said he saw comparable lead levels when he conducted research in two villages in Ecuador where the main trade is glazing tiles with lead from batteries. The villagers experienced mental retardation, hearing loss and hematological abnormalities, which are common in liver diseases, she said.
Lead exposure during Beethoven’s lifetime
Currently, it is not known what the average amount of lead is in the bodies of people like Beethoven who lived in Vienna during the 19th century, Rifai said.
He said he hopes to access old locks of hair that people have from their families to determine the base level of the population at the time, since no documentation exists.
But how did Beethoven end up with so much lead, as well as arsenic and mercury, in his body? The substances likely accumulated over decades of the composer’s life through food and drink, Rifai said.
Beethoven was known to prefer wine, sometimes drinking a bottle a day and drinking wine neat. A common practice dating back at least 2,000 years, creating plumbed wine involves adding lead acetate as a sweetener and preservative, Rifai said. At that time, lead was also used in glass manufacturing to give glassware a clearer, more attractive appearance.
Beethoven also loved to eat fish, and at the time, the Danube River was a large source of industry, which meant that waste ended up in the same river which was a source of fish caught for consumption, and that fish probably contained arsenic and mercury, Rifai said. saying.
The report marks the first time Lead levels have been established for Beethoven and points to another possible cause of Beethoven’s kidney failure in the months before his death and the liver failure he experienced at the end of his life, Meredith said.
Lead poisoning appears to be the fourth factor that contributed to his liver failure, aside from the genes that predisposed Beethoven to liver disease, his hepatitis B infection and his penchant for drinking alcohol, Meredith said.
Linking health and Beethoven’s music
The composer wrote a letter to his brothers in 1802 asking that his doctor, Johann Adam Schmidt, determine and share the nature of his “illness” once Beethoven died. The letter is known as the Heiligenstadt Will.
But the documents kept by Beethoven’s favorite doctor, who died 18 years before his patient, have been lost.
In his 1802 letter to his brothers, Beethoven admitted how hopeless he felt as a music composer struggling with hearing loss, but his work prevented him from taking his own life. He said that he did not want to leave “before having produced all the works that I felt the need to compose.”
“People say, ‘music is music, why do we need to know about all this?’ But in Beethoven’s life there is a connection between his suffering and music,” Meredith said.
May 7 marked the bicentennial of the first performance of Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony, widely considered his most important work and his last symphony. Beethoven, who was completely deaf at the time, was on stage as one of the conductors, but the orchestra was instructed to follow the direction of Beethoven’s friend, who was also on stage. The concert marked one of the most triumphant moments in Beethoven’s life, and the singers turned him to face the crowd as they applauded and waved their handkerchiefs at the beloved musician, Meredith said.
But at the end of the night, Beethoven met up with three of his friends who helped him organize the concert. What at first seemed like a dinner to reward his friends actually resulted in Beethoven yelling at them and accusing them of swindling him out of money.
The outburst was ironic, considering that Beethoven had been inspired while working on the Ninth Symphony in part by Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy,” and the symphony’s closing themes include living in peace and harmony with one another, he said. Meredith. But above a sketch Beethoven made for the Ninth Symphony, he included the French word for despair.
“When you look back at his life, it is a life full of despair. He went deaf. He never found a woman he could dedicate himself to loving. He had terrible abdominal problems since he was a child. He really had a hard time maintaining relationships with people,” Meredith said. “If you understand how much pain he felt and the paranoia he experienced because of his deafness, the whole story of the Ninth Symphony becomes much more complex.”