Study Concludes Beethoven Died From Lead Poisoning

The hairs were the smallest things Kemner had ever analyzed with the X-ray beam. In part because of that success, he has since moved on to measuring heavy-metal levels in individual bacteria, which are 1/100th the diameter of those hairs.

The skull relics are the property of a California businessman who inherited them through various relatives from his great-great uncle, who was a doctor in Austria. The lead analysis has been complete for more than a year, Walsh and Kemner said in a telephone interview yesterday. But the two were sworn to secrecy until the businessman received the test results comparing the bone DNA to that in the hairs.

Those tests, recently completed, came back somewhat short of definitive, but the provenance of the bones is "absolutely clear," said William Meredith, a Beethoven scholar and director of the Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California.

Beethoven developed serious health problems in his early twenties, which grew worse over time and reflected many of the symptoms of lead poisoning, including severe stomach problems.

The composer was deaf by his late twenties, a problem of questionable relevance because deafness has only rarely been associated with lead poisoning.

But with his many health problems, it is not hard to imagine that medicine itself may have done him in, Meredith said.

"He was diagnosed with lots of things, and he was prescribed lots of different treatments." If nothing else, he said, some medicines may have leached the metal from leaded glass medicine bottles.

Although the new work leaves the question of the lead's source frustratingly unanswered, it is an important contribution, Meredith said.

"There have been many doctors who have theorized about what ailed Beethoven," he said. "But this is actual science versus interpreting someone else's description of symptoms."