Locks of Hair May Hold Clues into Beethoven’s Hearing Loss

May 7 marked the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s premier of his ninth symphony. It would be his last and arguably his penultimate achievement. As the tale is told, Beethoven had to be tapped on his arm by a soloist at the start of the second movement to be made aware of the thunderous applause of the audience at his back.

It is common knowledge that Beethoven began losing his hearing during early adulthood, some estimate during his mid-twenties. The mystery as to what caused his hearing to deteriorate remains. In addition to hearing loss, he was also plagued with abdominal pain and digestion issues in adulthood of unknown origin at the time.

However, with the help of modern toxicology methods, strands of his hair contain clues to what may have ailed the composer. Hair samples taken at Beethoven’s deathbed side, and confirmed by DNA testing, reveal excessive levels of lead in many of the samples evaluated by the Mayo Clinic.

A normal hair sample will contain less than four micrograms, whereas Beethoven’s contained between 200–380 micrograms! Could heavy metal poisoning have contributed to the composer’s ailments and ultimate death? We may never know for certain, but this finding provides some new insight.

For more information, read the full article.

References

Kolata G. (2024) Lock of Beethoven’s hair offers new clues to the mystery of his deafness. New York Times (accessed May 13, 2024).