one stormy monday German composer, March 1827 ludwig von beethoven He died after a long illness. Bedridden since Christmas the previous year, he was stricken with jaundice, his limbs and abdomen were swollen, and every breath seemed to be painful.
When his colleague was sorting through his personal belongings, he discovered a document written by Beethoven a quarter of a century ago. It was a suicide note begging his brothers to inform the public of the details of his medical condition.
Today, it’s no secret that one of the greatest musicians the world has ever known had functional hearing loss by his mid-40s. This was the tragic irony that Beethoven wanted the world to understand, not only from a personal point of view, but also from a medical point of view.
The composer would have outlived his doctor by nearly 20 years, but nearly two centuries after Beethoven’s death, a team of researchers determined that by genetically analyzing the DNA of his authenticated hair samples, he could have lived his dream. He set about fulfilling his will in ways he never thought he would.
“Our main goal was to uncover Beethoven’s health problems, which began with progressive deafness in his mid-to-late twenties and eventually led to functional deafness by 1818.” Said Johannes Krauss, a biochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said:
The main cause of her hearing loss was unknown even to her doctor, Dr. Johann Adam Schmidt. The condition, which began as tinnitus in her twenties, gradually reduced her tolerance to loud noises and eventually led to her high-frequency hearing loss, effectively ending her career as a performing artist.
For musicians, nothing could be more ironic. In a letter to his brothers, Beethoven admitted that he was “hopelessly distressed” to the point of contemplating suicide.
Deafness wasn’t the only thing the composer had to deal with as an adult. He is said to have suffered from severe stomach pains and chronic diarrhea since at least the age of 22.
The first signs of liver disease appeared six years before his death, and the disease was thought to be at least partially responsible for his death at the relatively young age of 56.
in 2007 A forensic examination of Beethoven’s supposed locks of hair suggests that lead poisoning may have hastened his death, even if lead poisoning was not the ultimate cause of his life-threatening symptoms. .
This is not a surprising conclusion, given the culture of drinking from lead containers and the medical practices of the time that involved the use of lead.
But this latest study, published in March this year, debunks that theory and reveals that the hair did not belong to Beethoven in the first place, but rather to an unknown woman.
More importantly, some of the locks identified as being much more likely from the composer’s head suggested that his death was probably the result of a hepatitis B infection, and that he had been drinking alcohol and having liver disease. It has been shown to be exacerbated by multiple risk factors.
What about his other symptoms?
“We found no definitive cause for Beethoven’s hearing loss or gastrointestinal ailments.” Said Klaus.
In a way, the life and death of this famous classical composer leaves more questions. Where did he get hepatitis? How did he get a lock of a woman’s hair to pass for centuries as Beethoven’s, and what was behind his gut pain and deafness?
This is a disappointing result considering the team was inspired by Beethoven’s desire to make the world aware of his hearing loss. Another surprise was hidden in his genes.
Further investigations comparing the Y chromosomes of hair samples with those of modern relatives of Beethoven’s paternal descent pointed to discrepancies. The generation leading up to this composer seems to have had a bit of a hanky-panky affair.
“This discovery indicates that between the conception of Hendrik van Beethoven in Kampenhout, Belgium around 1572, and the conception of Ludwig van Beethoven in Bonn, Germany, seven generations later, in 1770, in his paternal lineage. It suggests that there was an external parent-child relationship event.” Said Tristan Begg is a biological anthropologist currently at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Considering the fateful demands he made on paper, it could all be a little more than what the young Beethoven bargained for. Little did he know that the secret was being kept when his friends and colleagues snipped the hair off his body in the wake of that gloomy and stormy Monday night in 1827.
This research biology today.
A previous version of this article was published in March 2023.
