APS proves Beethoven had heavy metal hair

Researchers using Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) have confirmed that composer Ludwig van Beethoven’s years of chronic illness were due to lead poisoning. This toxin also may have contributed to the 19th-century composer’s death.

Chemical analysis showed extraordinarily high levels of lead in strands of Beethoven’s hair, according to William Walsh, chief scientist for the Health Research Institute in Naperville, Ill. The institute performs chemical analysis of trace elements in the hair of children and adults and relates it to nutritional and biological conditions that contribute to behavior disorders and mental illness. Walsh led the Beethoven hair study in collaboration with Argonne physicists.

The team performed nondestructive X-ray beam experiments involving side-by-side testing of six Beethoven hairs, a standard hair of known lead composition and a thin film of standard "lead glass" with a known lead composition.

They found elevated lead levels that averaged about 60 parts per million (ppm) in the six Beethoven hairs, confirming earlier findings at Chicago’s McCrone Research Institute. According to Walsh, average Americans today have 0.6 ppm of lead in their hair, about 100 times less than Beethoven.

Researchers performed the elemental X-ray fluorescence analysis at the APS Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation Collaborative Access Team’s (SRI-CAT) beamline. SRI-CAT focuses on developing new instrumentation and techniques for the synchrotron radiation community as well as providing beam time for experiments.

Researchers will continue studying the hair. "The APS is the only machine in the country where we can perform the research we have planned," said Ken Kemner, one of the group of Argonne researchers involved in the project. The group plans to use microimaging to look at the distribution of lead in and on the hair to identify the presence of any surface effects and to determine the degree of recent lead exposure. "The hair is a timeline of exposure," Kemner said. "We’ll be able to determine his exposure during the last six months of his life since that is about the amount of hair we have. We hope to determine if the lead levels were due to diet, and if there were multiple high doses or high background amounts."

"Beethoven saw physician after physician in search of a cure for his physical ailments," said Walsh. "He suffered from bad digestion, chronic abdominal pain, irritability and depression. Since he died in 1827 at age 57, there has been much speculation but no proof of the cause of his illnesses and death."

Lead poisoning could explain his life-long illnesses. "It would also have had an impact on his personality and could have contributed to his death," said Walsh. Walsh doubts that lead poisoning caused his deafness, but research continues.

The source of the lead poisoning is unknown but could have been from drinking mineral water at spas, from dishes or wine stored in lead-lined flasks or lead crystal.

"You can learn a great deal about a person from hair analysis," said Walsh. He looked for distinctive trace-metal patterns associated with genius, irritability, glucose disorders and malabsorption and found they were not present in the Beethoven samples.

He also looked for the presence of mercury, which would have suggested that Beethoven received medical treatment for syphilis, which was usually treated in that period with mercury compounds, and which some Beethoven scholars suspected he had contracted. No mercury was found.

For more information please contact Catherine Foster