Analysis of locks of hair clipped from the corpse of Ludwig van Beethoven 173 years ago indicate that the medical problems that plagued the renowned composer's life were probably caused by lead poisoning.
Bad digestion, chronic abdominal pain, irritability and depression--and quite likely even his death at the age of 57--were produced by lead that Beethoven ingested from his environment, chemist William Walsh of the Health Research Institute said in a news conference Tuesday at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
"Beethoven saw physician after physician in search of a cure for his physical ailments," all without success, Walsh said. "Independent analyses of Beethoven's hair show that he had plumbism--or lead poisoning--which could explain his lifelong illnesses. It would also have had an impact on his personality and could have contributed to his death."
Many scholars had thought that Beethoven died of syphilis, but the new study confirmed earlier ones that indicate otherwise. During Beethoven's lifetime, mercury-containing drugs were the common form of treatment for syphilis. The hair analysis shows no trace of the element, which would almost certainly have been present if he had been treated with mercury drugs.
Further studies by chemist Walter McCrone of the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago also confirmed that the composer had not taken any painkillers, such as laudanum, during his long and painful final illness. That finding, confirming earlier studies by Werner Baumgartner of Psychomedics Corp. in Los Angeles, "implies that he decided to keep his head clear for his music," Walsh said.
The hair's history is surprisingly well documented. The day after Beethoven's 1827 death from pneumonia, a lock of his hair was clipped by a young Viennese Jewish musician named Ferdinand Hiller. The practice was quite common, according to Ira Brilliant, founder of the Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State.
So many people clipped hair from the corpse that Beethoven "was practically bald when he was buried," Brilliant said.
The lock of hair remained in the Hiller family for more than a century, until it was given to Dr. Kay Fremming, a Danish physician who helped save Jews in Nazi-occupied Denmark.
After Fremming's death, his daughter put it up for sale through Sotheby's in London and it was purchased for $7,300 in 1994 by Brilliant and Alfredo "Che" Guevara, a neurologist in Nogales, Ariz.
