New news about lead in LBV's hair ->death

[AlexOv]

I didn't see this in any of the recent thread titles so maybe I am the first to read the newspaper today:

Doctor blamed for death of genius (in headline sized font)
Richard Scheinin San Jose
August 27, 2007

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 an article published on Friday.

The article in The Beethoven Journal, published by San Jose State University, lays the composer's crash at the feet of Dr Andreas Wawruch and his bedside remedies.

Beethoven's demise 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.

The article's author, Viennese forensic scientist Christian Reiter, analysed 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 behaviour.

Beethoven suffered from depression, deafness, digestive troubles and other ailments, making him an ideal subject.

Charting the composer's final four months, Professor 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 December 5, 1826, and February 27, 1827, according to Professor Reiter.

He theorises 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 two months.

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

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 heavy drinker at a time when lead was commonly added to wines to increase sweetness, probably suffered from cirrhosis.

A lead-laced medicine would have sent his liver "over the brink" and into collapse, Professor Reiter said.

This article was from AP (Associated Press?) and by the time you -dear reader- read this, you probably already heard the news elsewhere, but here is the news nonetheless!

[Michael]

I was wondering why this story cropped up again but it seems they have a fall guy now for B's death. Peter mentioned it in another thread. It's a pity the poor doctor hasn't a chance to defend himself.
Or maybe ... the doc did it on purpose! Yes - I see it all now! Beethoven discovered that this doctor was the one who murdered Mozart all those years ago (also by lead poisoning) but he found out too late and had to be removed!
Now, if we could only figure out who killed Haydn ........

[makir35]

Beethoven hired someone to poison Mozart, similar to the Harding-Kerrigan incident. This is old news.

[Preston]

Beethoven hired someone to poison Mozart, similar to the Harding-Kerrigan incident. This is old news.

I don't know if you are being serious or not... but Mozart definitely did not die because of Beethoven. Mozart died after a period of sickness which lasted for months. Beethoven died from illness which lasted for years and years and years. I do not know about a doctor that gave him to much medicine with lead, I doubt it to be true, but Beethoven was already dying at the time anyway, due to his years of very serious medical conditions. So, as I understand it, Beethoven was going to die whether or not the doctor gave him the wrong medicine, at least that is what I understand based on what I have read. Rest in peace, Beethoven, .

[Peter]

So, as I understand it, Beethoven was going to die whether or not the doctor gave him the wrong medicine, at least that is what I understand based on what I have read. Rest in peace, Beethoven, .

Unfortunately in those days there was no 'right' medicine, virtually all were wrong, so the doctor can hardly be blamed!

[Michael]

I don't know if you are being serious or not... but Mozart definitely did not die because of Beethoven. Mozart died after a period of sickness which lasted for months.

Please, please! I was trying to be funny (and obviously not succeeding). No more conspiracy theories.

[Preston]

Please, please! I was trying to be funny (and obviously not succeeding). No more conspiracy theories.

I know that you were being funny, and did succeed, . I was talking about makir35. makir35, I thought you were serious because you compared it to Harding and Kerrigan, which was true.

[PDG]

Didn't Harding whack Kerrigan with a LEAD pipe? On the ice rink? By Colonel Mustard? I think I win...

[Michael]

Didn't Harding whack Kerrigan with a LEAD pipe? On the ice rink? By Colonel Mustard? I think I win...

That's murder!

[Hollywood]

I found this on the CNN International website this morning which lists a bit more information than the post that Alex posted above:

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Did someone kill Beethoven? A Viennese pathologist claims the composer's physician did -- inadvertently overdosing him with lead in a case of a cure that went wrong.


For the great Ludwig van Beethoven, the treatment may have been worse than the disease.

Other researchers are not convinced, but there is no controversy about one fact: The master had been a very sick man years before his death in 1827.

Previous research determined that Beethoven had suffered from lead poisoning, first detecting toxic levels of the metal in his hair and then, two years ago, in bone fragments. Those findings strengthened the belief that lead poisoning may have contributed -- and ultimately led -- to his death at age 57.

But Viennese forensic expert Christian Reiter claims to know more after months of painstaking work applying CSI-like methods to strands of Beethoven's hair.

He says his analysis, published last week in the Beethoven Journal, shows that in the final months of the composer's life, lead concentrations in his body spiked every time he was treated by his doctor, Andreas Wawruch, for fluid inside the abdomen. Those lethal doses permeated Beethoven's ailing liver, ultimately killing him, Reiter told The Associated Press.

"His death was due to the treatments by Dr. Wawruch," said Reiter, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Vienna's Medical University. "Although you cannot blame Dr. Wawruch -- how was he to know that Beethoven already had a serious liver ailment?"

Nobody did back then.

Only through an autopsy after the composer's death in the Austrian capital on March 26, 1827, were doctors able to establish that Beethoven suffered from cirrhosis of the liver as well as edemas of the abdomen. Reiter says that in attempts to ease the composer's suffering, Wawruch repeatedly punctured the abdominal cavity -- and then sealed the wound with a lead-laced poultice.

Although lead's toxicity was known even then, the doses contained in a treatment balm "were not poisonous enough to kill someone if he would have been healthy," Reiter said. "But what Dr. Wawruch clearly did not know that his treatment was attacking an already sick liver, killing that organ."

Even before the edemas developed, Wawruch noted in his diary that he treated an outbreak of pneumonia months before Beethoven's death with salts containing lead, which aggravated what researchers believe was an existing case of lead poisoning.

But, said Reiter, 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.

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

Such claims intrigue others who have researched the issue.

"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 found large amounts of lead in Beethoven's bone fragments. That research two years ago confirmed the cause of years of debilitating disease that likely led to his death -- but did not tie his demise to Wawruch.

"I believe that Beethoven's death may have been caused by this application of lead-containing medicines to an already severely lead-poisoned man," Walsh said.

Still, he added, 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.

With hair, "you have the issue of contamination from outside material, shampoos, residues, weathering problems. The membranes on the outside of the hair tend to deteriorate," he said, suggesting more research is needed on the exact composition of the medications given Beethoven in his last months of his life.

As for what caused the poisoning even before Wawruch's treatments, some say it was the lead-laced wine Beethoven drank. Others speculate that as a young man he drank water with high concentrations of lead at a spa.

"We still don't know the ultimate cause," Reiter said. "But he was a very sick man -- for years before his death."

The Beethoven Journal is published by the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California.

[Peter]

Thanks Hollywood and here is some more from William Walsh and I have to agree with him that it isn't reasonable either to lay the blame at Wawruch's feet or to assume that Beethoven could have survived much longer without his treatment.

"William Walsh, a forensic investigator who has directed analyses of Beethoven's hairs for the Health Research Institute in Warrenville, Ill., wondered if the "spikes" are true indications of lead introduced to Beethoven's system in his final days. Just as likely, he said, is the possibility that medicine administered by Wawruch had the effect of unbinding old lead, stored in the bones for years, and flushing it into Beethoven's bloodstream and hairs.

Walsh's own analyses have shown lead levels 60 to 80 times normal in Beethoven's hairs — significantly higher, actually, than the levels in Reiter's study — with similar results coming from the bone fragments. (More durable than hair, bone is generally regarded as a more reliable object for forensic testing than hair). Guevara, the physician in Arizona, said Reiter's results "add to the body of evidence" that Beethoven suffered from lead poisoning and liver disease.

But while agreeing with Reiter that lead poisoning took Beethoven's liver "over the top," he wondered if Wawruch should really be saddled with Beethoven's death. After all, Guevara said, Beethoven was already sick, jaundiced and with a damaged liver, by the time Wawruch arrived: "Saying the doctor caused his death is too simple a solution."

[Cetto von Cronstorff]

Unfortunately Prof. Reiter's theory doesn't hold water, because it has basically been presented without any necessary documentation. The whole hypothesis will be met with a highly necessary revaluation in Prof. Josef Eisinger's article 'The Lead in Beethoven's Hair', Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry 2007 (in press). Eisinger is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Strucural and Chemical Biology Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY.

[Michael]

Prof. Reiter's theory doesn't hold water, .

Which, unfortunately, could not be said about poor Beethoven. Dropsy has previously been cited as one of the causes of his death.

[Peter]

Which, unfortunately, could not be said about poor Beethoven. Dropsy has previously been cited as one of the causes of his death.

Yes which was itself a symptom of the liver Cirrhosis. Quite extraordinary that such a hoo-ha is being made over this by the 'experts' - great revelation that early 19th century doctors weren't as good as todays and that they used horrors such as lead, arsenic and mercury to treat people. Just think Chopin wouldn't have had TB, Mozart would certainly have lived longer, Tchaikovsky might have witnessed the premier of the Rite of Spring and it's all those useless doctors' faults!

[gardibolt]

Tchaikovsky wouldn't have witnessed anything since he committed suicide.