It's little wonder that I was attracted to singing in the Beethoven Society
of Australia Choir!
Elizabeth O'Brien

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rebekah Waechter"
To: <leadnet@...>
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 5:22 AM
Subject: [Leadnet] Expert: Beethoven inadvertently poisoned by doctor


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.


http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/28/whokilledbeethoven.ap/index.html


Expert: Beethoven inadvertently poisoned by doctor
a.. Story Highlights
b.. Beethoven was treated for fluid in the abdomen

c.. Doctor treated him by puncturing abdomen, covering with
lead-containing balm

d.. Lead in Beethoven's body could have also been from other sources

e.. Beethoven died at age 57 in 1827


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.