Which destroyed a liver which was already affected by cirrhosis

Aug 30, 2007 10:11 GMT  ·  By

Even if Beethoven was deaf, he 'listened' to his doctor. But this proved even worse, as his doctor poisoned him. With lead. A Viennese forensic expert shows that the composer's physician unwittingly overdosed the genius with the toxic metal. It was clear that the master had been very ill years before his death in 1827, at the age of 57. Previous analyses showed that Beethoven had experienced lead poisoning, with high levels of the toxin in his hair and bones.

Christian Reiter's recent analysis revealed that in the last months of the composer's life, lead levels in his body boomed each time his doctor, Andreas Wawruch, treated him for fluid inside the abdomen. "Those lethal doses permeated Beethoven's ailing liver, ultimately killing him," Reiter, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Vienna's Medical University, told AP. "Although you cannot blame Dr. Wawruch - how was he to know that Beethoven already had a serious liver ailment?" The autopsy after the composer's death revealed that Beethoven suffered from cirrhosis of the liver, besides edemas of the abdomen. "In attempts to ease the composer's suffering, Wawruch repeatedly punctured the abdominal cavity - and then sealed the wound with a lead-laced poultice.", said Reiter.

Back then, lead was already known to be toxic, but the concentrations in the balm "were not poisonous enough to kill someone if he would have been healthy. But what Dr. Wawruch clearly did not know that his treatment was attacking an already sick liver, killing that organ."

Beethoven had been treated with lead salts for an outbreak of pneumonia months before the development of the edemas, and this induced an earlier lead poisoning. "But, it was the repeated doses of the lead-containing cream, administered by Wawruch in the last weeks of Beethoven's life, that did in the composer.", said Reiter.

Hair analysis revealed "several peaks where the concentration of lead rose pretty massively on the four occasions between Dec. 5, 1826, and Feb. 27, 1827, when Beethoven himself documented that he had been treated by Wawruch for the edema. Every time when his abdomen was punctured ... we have an increase of the concentration of lead in the hair.", Reiter said.

"His data strongly suggests that Beethoven was subjected to significant lead exposures over the last 111 days of his life and that this lead may have been in the very medicines applied by his doctor," said Bill Walsh, who led the team at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago that encountered high levels of lead in Beethoven's bones.

"I believe that Beethoven's death may have been caused by this application of lead-containing medicines to an already severely lead-poisoned man. Still, samples from hair analysis are not normally considered as reliable as from bone, which showed high levels of lead concentration over years, instead of months.", said Walsh.

The hair is an indication of "contamination from outside material, shampoos, residues, weathering problems. The membranes on the outside of the hair tend to deteriorate," he said. Still, what caused Beethoven's lead poisoning even before Wawruch's treatments? It could have been lead-laced wine or water with high levels of lead at a spa. "He was a very sick man - for years before his death.", added Reiter.