Expert ties Beethoven’s death to doctor’s care

Ludwig van Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, after four months of misery on a dirty straw mattress in Vienna. What brought on that downward spiral? Lead poisoning accidentally caused by his own doctor, says a journal article published Friday.

The article in the Beethoven Journal, published by San Jose State University’s Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, lays the composer’s demise at the feet of Dr. Andreas Wawruch and his bedside remedies. Beethoven’s death at 56 put an end to years of depression and mysterious physical ailments, but, according to the article, it didn’t have to happen when it did.

For musicologists, the very idea that Beethoven’s death was an accident, and that his life might possibly have been extended, is shocking: “What else could he have composed?” asked William Meredith, director of San Jose State’s Beethoven center, the only research center in North America devoted to Beethoven. “Because if you can extend Beethoven’s life by a year, you could have had two more string quartets. He was working on a string quintet when he got sick. And then there are the famous sketches for his Tenth Symphony.”

The article’s author, Viennese forensic scientist Christian Reiter, analyzed concentrations of lead in strands of the composer’s hair.

Because hair grows at a measurable rate, it traces a time line. And because lead and other toxins migrate from the bloodstream to the hair and remain there, forensic researchers study hair for clues about sickness and sociopathic behavior. Beethoven suffered from depression, deafness, digestive troubles and other ailments, making him an ideal subject.

Charting the composer’s final four months through the hairs, Reiter established day-by-day correlations between Beethoven’s bedside medical treatments at the hands of Wawruch and lead concentrations in the composer’s body: A dramatic spike in the concentrations follows each of the doctor’s five treatments between Dec. 5, 1826, and Feb. 27, 1827, according to Reiter.

He theorizes that Wawruch, treating Beethoven for pneumonia that December, administered a medicine containing lead, as many medicines did at the time. Within days, Beethoven’s stomach became terribly bloated, leading Wawruch to puncture his patient’s abdomen four times in the next two months. Gallons of fluid drained out, some of it spilling into the bedding; Beethoven complained about the bugs and the odor.

Reiter’s suspicion is that the sticky poultices applied to the puncture wounds contained soapy lead salts, as they often did early in the 19th century; the salts would have been absorbed into the bloodstream, spiking lead levels.

He further suspects that Wawruch did not understand Beethoven’s underlying health problems, spelled out in the autopsy: a breakdown of the digestive system and extensive damage to the kidneys and liver, which was “like leather.”

Beethoven, a big drinker at a time when lead was commonly added to wines to increase sweetness, probably suffered from cirrhosis, a chronic liver disease. A lead-laced medicine would have sent his liver “over the brink” and to collapse, Reiter said this week. He spoke by phone from Vienna, where he is professor of forensic pathology at the Medical University of Vienna.