Beethoven's Bad Hair Day
The news that Ludwig van Beethoven may have died on March 26, 1827, from accidental lead poisoning caused by his own doctor is fascinating, but not only because it allows us to fantasize about what he might have composed if he had lived beyond his fifty-seven years. Two more string quartets? A tenth symphony? No, the most interesting part of Viennese forensic scientist Christian Reiter's article, published last week in Beethoven Journal, is that merely several strands of hair clued analysts to dramatic spikes in lead concentrations over the course of five medical treatments the composer underwent toward the end of his life, months he reportedly spent miserably in unclean conditions. Reiter theorizes that Beethoven's physician, Andreas Wawruch, may have been treating Beethoven's pneumonia with a medicine containing lead. Beethoven's overindulgence in wine containing lead may also have led, as it were, to liver cirrhosis. Unfinished works or not, Beethoven seemed to be in your basic downward artistic spiral.
The science delivering us these historical details, on the other hand, is virtuosic. Researchers have been analyzing Beethoven's hair since 2000. Their research material is part of the so-called Guevara Lock, 582 strands of hair a young musician named Ferdinand Miller yanked from Beethoven's corpse the day after his death and gave to his son as a birthday present in 1883. Four members of the Beethoven Society, including principal investor Dr. Alfred Guevara, eventually paid $7,300 for the lock at a Sotheby's auction in 1994. Guevara donated part of his portion to San Jose State University's Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, who have put it on display and provided it for analysis. It's a weird and amazing story, and the website for the 2005 documentary Beethoven's Hair (based on Russell Martin's book Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved) makes it stranger still.