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Beethoven’s wish fulfilled
Dec. 9,
2005
Courtesy Argonne National Laboratory
and World Science staff
Skull fragments of 19th Century composer Ludwig von Beethoven contain so much lead,
researchers say, that it’s likely the metal caused both his long-term health problems and
his death.
In announcing the finding, they noted that they were fulfilling a wish the composer himself voiced: that scientists would
use his remains to find out what was wrong with him, hopefully to prevent others from having to go through it.
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Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., said the fragments, shown by DNA testing to have come from Beethoven’s body, were scanned by X-rays at the lab, which deploys the most powerful X-rays in the Western Hemisphere.
They also scanned another bone fragment from the same period. Both fragments
came from the top of the skull.
“The testing indicated large amounts of lead in the Beethoven bone sample” compared to the other one, said Bill Walsh, chief scientist at the Pfeiffer Treatment Center in Warrenville, Ill., and director of the Beethoven Research Project.
The fragment belongs to Paul Kaufman, a California businessman who inherited the relics through other family members from his great-great uncle, an Austrian doctor. Not sure if the fragment was actually from the composer, Kaufman sent it to the University of Muenster in Germany for DNA comparison with the samples of Beethoven’s hair, owned by the Beethoven Society and also analyzed by Walsh and his colleagues.
The findings confirm the earlier work done on the hair samples, the researchers
said. In addition, the researchers found no detectable levels of either cadmium or mercury – both considered possibilities for causing Beethoven’s illness – in either the bone fragment or the hair.
“The finding of elevated lead in Beethoven’s skull, along with DNA results indicating authenticity of the bone/hair relics, provides solid evidence that Beethoven suffered from a toxic overload of lead,” Walsh said in a statement. “In addition, the presence of lead in the skull suggests that his exposure to lead was not a recent event, but may have been present for many years.”
But the researchers didn’t say why Beethoven might have been exposed to lead.
Once it goes into the body, lead dissipates slowly. It takes 22 years for half of it to go away, the researchers said. Most of what stays eventually settles into the bones.
Beethoven experienced a change of personality and abdominal illness in his late teens and early 20s that persisted throughout his adult life. His abdominal symptoms and autopsy findings are both consistent with lead poisoning, Walsh said.
There are documented cases of deafness resulting from lead poisoning, they
added, but this has been uncommon. So it remains unclear if the poisoning also
caused Beethoven’s deafness.
“Beethoven saw physician after physician in search of a cure for his physical ailments,” said Walsh. In a letter to a friend,
Beethoven expressed a wish that after his death, researchers would use his remains to help determine the cause of his illness so that others would not have to suffer as he did. “Beethoven suffered from bad digestion, chronic abdominal pain, irritability and
depression,” Wash noted. “Since he died in 1827 at age 57, there has been much speculation but no proof of the cause of his illnesses and death.”
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