Lead Poisoning, Hair Anaylsis and Beethoven: Solving a Medical Mystery

In 1827, A 56 year-old man died with his belly, arms and legs swollen like balloons. At age 22, he had developed belly cramps and diarrhea, which continued to occur for the rest of his life. He drank alcohol regularly, and whenever he drank his belly pain worsened. Two years before he died, his legs stayed swollen all the time. He started to lose his hearing at age 28 and became totally deaf at age 44. This made him miserable because he was a musician. He was so upset by his loss of hearing that he became depressed and as he aged, he started to spend long periods alone and when he was with other people, he acted crazy. He let his hair grow to his shoulders and he stopped combing it. He wandered around Vienna wearing an huge top hat and a coat that touched the ground. He walked around humming off-key and carried a notebook on which he scribbled all the time. He complained constantly about pain in his joints and his big toe would swell up again and again.

After he died, his autopsy showed that his liver was extremely small, and that he had kidney stones that destroyed his kidneys, to cause him to retain fluid, and die of kidney failure. You are correct if you recognize that this is the true story of perhaps the greatest composer who ever lived: Ludwig von Beethoven.

He died of kidney failure, but what caused his kidney failure? Stones in his kidneys! But what caused his kidney stones and intermittent joint pains? Gout! But what causes gout, pain in joints, and damages the nerves to cause deafness and craziness? Lead poisoning. Somehow he was poisoned with lead.

Beethoven died in 1827 and no tests were available to prove or disapprove whether he was poisoned with lead. After Beethoven died, hair was removed from his head and kept by his admirers; it is still available today. In November 2000, a study from the Health Research Institute in Naperville, Illinois, showed the concentration of lead in Beethoven’s hair was more than 100 times the amount found in healthy human hair. The source of the lead contamination remains unknown. Researchers are certain that Beethoven’s exposure to lead came as an adult, because he did not have vomiting and brain damage as a child and his disease worsened progressively as he aged. Lead directly damaged his nerves to make him deaf and crazy. Lead raised blood levels of uric acid that formed crystals in his joints to make them hurt and stones in his kidneys to damage them, causing his arms and legs to swell and eventually kill him of kidney failure.