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High levels of lead detected in authenticated locks of Ludwig van BeethovenThe composer’s hair suggests he had lead poisoning, which may have contributed to the ailments he endured throughout his life, including deafness, according to new research.
The famous classical composer suffered from hearing loss throughout his life, as well as recurrent gastrointestinal complaints, suffered two attacks of jaundice, and faced severe liver disease.
Beethoven is believed to have died of liver and kidney disease at the age of 56. But the process of understanding what was causing his many health problems was a much more complex puzzle that even Beethoven hoped doctors would eventually be able to solve.
The composer expressed his wish that his ailments would be investigated and shared so that “at least the world would be at peace with me after my death.”
About a decade ago, an international research team set out to partially fulfill Beethoven’s wish by examining locks of his hair. Using DNA analysis, the team determined which ones truly belonged to the composer and which were fakes, and sequenced his genome by analyzing Beethoven’s authenticated locks.
The findings, published in a March 2023 report, revealed that Beethoven had significant genetic risk factors for liver disease and hepatitis B infection before his death. But the results did not provide any insight into the underlying causes of his deafness or gastrointestinal problems, which began in his 20s.
Beethoven’s genome was made publicly available, and researchers around the world were invited to investigate persistent questions about Beethoven’s health.
Meanwhile, scientists continue to figuratively examine Beethoven’s verified locks of hair with a fine-toothed comb and uncover surprising insights.
The latest findings showed that, in addition to high concentrations of lead, arsenic and mercury were still found trapped in the composer’s strings nearly 200 years after his death, according to a new letter published Monday in the journal Clinical Chemistry. And the resulting information could provide new windows into understanding not only Beethoven’s chronic health conditions, but also the complex nuances of his life as a composer.
A tangled web reveals the lead
Christian Reiter, now retired deputy director of the Forensic Medicine Center of the Medical University of Vienna, had previously studied the Hiller Lock, a long hair sample attributed to Beethoven. After identifying high levels of lead in the hair, he wrote and published an article in 2007 suggesting that lead may have contributed to the composer’s deafness and potentially his death.
A genomic sequencing study conducted in 2023 revealed that Hiller Lock did not belong to Beethoven and was actually a hair sample belonging to a woman. 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?
A separate research team used two different methods to look for lead evidence 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 hand-delivered. To pianist Anton Halm in April 1826.
William Meredith, a Beethoven scholar and co-author of the 2023 genomic analysis and the latest study, said that during Beethoven’s lifetime, it was very common for people to collect and save locks of hair from loved ones or famous people.
The new research detected incredibly high levels of lead in both samples: 64 times the expected level in the Bermann Lock and 95 times the expected level in the Halm-Thayer lock.
“These levels are considered lead poisoning,” said lead study author Nader Rifai, 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 immediately admitted and put on chelation therapy.”
Identifying Beethoven
The high levels of lead detected in Beethoven’s hair “are generally associated with gastrointestinal and kidney disorders and reduced hearing, but are not considered high enough to be the sole cause of death,” the study authors wrote. Meredith said it was impossible to tell when lead poisoning began because researchers did not have hair samples from Beethoven’s early life.
The study’s authors do not believe lead poisoning was solely responsible for Beethoven’s death or deafness. But Rifai said he has experienced symptoms of lead poisoning throughout his life, including hearing loss, muscle cramps and kidney abnormalities.
Both locks contained increased levels of arsenic and mercury, approximately 13 to 14 times the expected amount, according to the investigation.
Study co-author Paul Jannetto, associate professor in the department of laboratory medicine and pathology and laboratory director at Mayo Clinic, analyzed the samples and said he had never seen lead levels this high before.
But Rifai said he saw similar lead levels when he surveyed two villages in Ecuador, when the main trade was polishing tiles with lead from batteries. He said the villagers experienced mental delays, hearing loss and hematological abnormalities that are common in liver disease.
Lead exposure during Beethoven’s lifetime
Rifai said there is currently no understanding of the average amount of lead in the bodies of people like Beethoven, who lived in 19th-century Vienna.
He said he hopes to access old locks of hair that people received from their families to determine the baseline level of the population at the time, as no documentation exists.
So how did Beethoven find so much lead, as well as arsenic and mercury, in his body? The substances likely accumulated through food and drink over decades during the composer’s life, Rifai said.
Beethoven was known to prefer wine, sometimes drinking a bottle a day and drinking sherbet wine. The creation of sanitary wine, a common practice dating back at least 2,000 years, involves adding lead acetate as a sweetener and preservative, Rifai said. At that time, lead was also used in glassmaking to give glassware a clearer and more attractive appearance.
Beethoven also loved eating fish, and at the time the Danube River was a major source of industry, which meant that waste flowed into the river where fish caught for consumption were sourced – and these fish likely contained arsenic and mercury, Rifai said.
The report marks the first time lead levels have been determined for Beethoven and points to another possible cause of the kidney failure Beethoven suffered in the months before his death and the liver failure he suffered at the end of his life, Meredith said.
Aside from the genes that predisposed Beethoven to liver disease, hepatitis B infection and his penchant for drinking alcohol, lead poisoning was the fourth factor contributing to liver failure, Meredith said.
The connection between Beethoven’s health and his music
The composer wrote a letter to his brothers in 1802 asking his physician, Johann Adam Schmidt, to determine and share the nature of Beethoven’s “illness” when he died. The letter is known as the Heiligenstadt Testament.
However, 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 composer of music struggling with hearing loss, but his work kept him from taking his own life. He said he did not want to leave “before I had produced all the works I felt the urge to compose”.
“People say, ‘Music is music, why do we need to know this stuff?’ says. But there is a connection between the pain Beethoven went through in his life and the music,” said Meredith.
May 7 marked the 200th anniversary of the first performance of Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony, widely considered his greatest work and his final 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 conducting of Beethoven’s friend, who was also on stage. The concert marked one of the most triumphant moments in Beethoven’s life, Meredith said, as female singers turned him toward the crowd and clapped and waved their handkerchiefs at the beloved musician.
However, at the end of the evening, Beethoven met with three friends who helped him organize the concert. What seemed at first to be a dinner to reward his friends actually ended with Beethoven shouting and accusing them of deceiving him.
Meredith said that Beethoven was inspired in part by Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy” while working on the Ninth Symphony, and that the outburst was ironic given that the symphony’s concluding themes involve living in peace and harmony with one another. However, Beethoven added the French word despair to a draft he made for the Ninth Symphony.
“When you look back at your life, you see that it was a life full of despair. He became deaf. He never found a woman he could love. He had terrible tummy problems since childhood. “He was having a really hard time maintaining relationships with people,” said Meredith. “If you understand how much pain he was in and the paranoia he was experiencing because of the deafness, it makes the whole story of the Ninth Symphony much more complicated.”
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