Beethoven's hair unlocks mystery of composer's cause of death, deafness
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- Опубліковано 9 тра 2024
- Two hundred years ago this week, Beethoven conducted his final symphony. He died three years later, and the cause has been relatively unknown... until now.
Who knew that a lock of hair could unlock one of history's biggest mysteries? abc7ne.ws/3UJxtjQ
#beethoven #composer #classicalmusic #abc7news
I wish they'd have mentioned that lead was basically used in everything back then, including cups and pitchers and the like that were used to store and drink water out of. They even used it in makeup.
then why wasnt everyone sick?
Lead was in pewter.
@@joepaolinelli7696 metallic lead doesnt dissolve in water...only in certain acids...citric and acetic especially.
metallic lead doesnt dissolve in water...only in certain acids...citric and acetic especially.
@joepaolinelli7696 they were sick and dying. Medicine was so bad that many ordinary people in towns died by 40 until the Victoria era. Mercury was used as medicine and to stiffen hats - hence the Mad Hatter (hat maker) exposed to too much mercury. Everyone drank alcohol in Europe instead of water as the water was polluted (the rivers were full of pollution and poop. Rainwater was caught in lead gutters and fed through lead pipes). All those metal tankards and metal plates you see in historic movies were pewter - tin and lead - and were used by wealthier people but began to be replaced by pottery plates in the 1700s. People went "to the country" to get well and often were healthier as they had fresh air, cleaner water and fresh food.
This is what I imagine it will be like 100-200 years from now with micro-plastics in everything, with future scientists discussing why they caused so much of our misery.
100 years from now that will be the least of scientists problems.
Exactly 💯
Aye
That will be a significant future study. The difference between lead and what we're doing today is...they didn't know. We do.
They're inert.
Brilliant.
My tap water was full of black bits. The landlord said to use a sieve. Hell, no. I rang environmental health. They tested the water. I forget the details but 32 was safe. Mine was 161.
Outcome: Lead pipes were removed from my entire street. AWESOME.
Wow. You actually may have saved lives. Imagine the babies who had been drinking and bathing in that water!
@dragonflash09 Exactly. I was so shocked but then amazed that the old water pipes were removed for the health safety of everyone in my street of 144 homes.
Look at you making a difference
! Congrats! 👏👏👏🥳
@foxjacket Thank you, but not without the dept of
Environmental
Health action. Another time, I had a problem with our electricity supply. 2 factions blamed each other. E. H. S. got involved, and it was sorted within 24 hours. Furthermore, we had a landfill site nearby for 13 years. When any problems occurred, if the owners ignored us, we were told to phone EHS, and they enforced the solution. E.g. One summer flies galore invaded our homes. A mother had to go elsewhere to feed her newborn baby because the flies would be on baby's face. We learned that the site had to send samples of flies to a lab to test them. It was about them feeding on rubbish or for eating from farmland next to us. Isn't that amazing. If it was site flies, the site could be fined. As it is, the site was quite brilliant. When they finished one section, they planted trees
10,000 trees per year.
Then, on completion, they transformed the land into a nature reserve. Prior to that, the land was an abandoned mine area with piles of coal dust heaps everywhere. Mucky mountains. 😁
Nice work! thank you for your persistence. it's people like you who make everything better for the rest of us. There is tremendous power in conviction. Bravissimo!
Someone was sure wise enough to save a lock of his hair & then preserve it for centuries.
They called me crazy at the time.
@@the_glitter_is😂😂😂
Just cus they saved it doesn't mesn they're wise. They could've cut and saved it for a multitude of reasons.
Just cus they saved it doesn't mean they're wise. They could've cut and saved it for a multitude of reasons.
@@snickerswo1f519oh gorblimey
Imagine making beautiful masterpieces and then slowly losing your hearing. what a torturous life that would’ve been
It would have been upsetting for him but I could think of much more torturous life’s throughout history. All things considered, he had a pretty decent life.
You should hear A Silence Haunts Me by Jake Runestead. He adapts a letter that Beethoven wrote to a friend about his loss of hearing and his gift of composing being lost prematurely.
He lived in Vienna. Prostitutes, bad water, lots of alcohol, long cold damp winters in drafty, moldy buildings, too many unhealthy foods, lots of people crowded together. Compared to his fellow pre 20th century Viennese composers he lived to a ripe old age. Probably because he usually spent summers in the country.
he died of lead poisoning...
Yeah, and he was rich! Can you imagine the life of poor people.
@@stevendouglas6593 poor people had no use for face powders or fancy wines
Don't forget the Vienna beef...
@@stevendouglas6593he died living poorly and was arrested by cops who felt he was a wandering homeless
At least he got to offer his tremendous gifts to the world while he could. I have to sit or lie down to listen to his piano concertos, there's nothing like them, his music transcends, like Rembrandt's paintings.
DW recently made a short documentary about how he composed. He was so brooked that he can't even have shoes before he was famous 😞
Concerto no. 5 is my favorite piano concerto. It is sublime.
Everything contained lead back then. They even used it as a substitute for sugar to sweeten wine. That was fairly common
Today we put plastics in everything. We never learn.
@@kenbob1071 who's we?
Compares to the reported sweet taste of lead paint chips in pre-1980s houses.
Then WHY DIDNT EVERYONE DIE OF IT? Hmmmm? Come on now you’re no doctor 🙄😂
@@kenbob1071we literally now have plastics in our bodies …so…..learning stuff never hurt anyone.
The research that I had to do during college (music major), all suggested that his hearing loss was caused by his father’s frequent and severe beatings, with a great deal of the damage done to his head and ears.
They don't have to be mutually exclusive. Lead exposure and environmental noise can both exacerbate trauma 👍
That's Brian Wilson
I am sure the abuse didn't help his situation.
Because your had no chemical tests to reference. New music majors will
@@sayitwithhellhounds Yikes. I never made that connection before. Poor Brian, poor Beethoven. Both just children who deserved better from their fathers.
Didn’t everybody know this for at least 50 years? I remember in high school being told Beethoven died from lead poisoning and they knew it from testing his hair.
Yes, I remember learning about this years ago.
Yes news is respun and retold , we also have “ special , chosen people “ who take over whole tribes and cultures
@@Z3nHolEminDwhatever deep thing you think that means
Yes. I remember this from the early 1970s. We were taught that lead was found in the paint of his decorative food plates and china. Supposedly also, a conductor assisted a young Beethoven by grabbing his ears while lifting him up and into an already moving trolley.
Yes, it was well known many years ago. Perhaps it has been reconfirmed with some newer or more sophisticated tests. I thought it had to do with treatments of some kind containing lead. Heavy metal poisoning was fairly common for medical reasons even into the 20th century.
Ludwig van had money to buy fine Spanish wine in large quantities. It was "sweetened" with a lead oxide. So although most folks got a lot of lead through lead water pipes and eating utensils, Beethoven got a whole lot more than normal.
I recall an old stereotype of deaf Englishmen with hearing horns. English upper crust drank a lot of Spanish Sherry. Same deal.
Interesting!🇺🇸
There is something adorable about Beethoven’s hair taped to a paper for us to see, like many moms do with their baby’s hair. ☺️
wtf bro? Weird comment
I taped my daughter’s bellybutton scab in her baby book. The last time I noticed, worms ate it.
I’d call it creepy, not adorable.
Wow, this is news to me! I love Beethoven, and feel so sad his life had more sorrow than joy.
It is a wonder he survived at all, from his father's beatings, to contracting syphilis from his mother, to lead poisoning.
How great to know this. He is one of my idols and I must see his lock of hair and visit this museum.
Thank you for this story and many thanks to the owner of the hair who had the good sense to unravel this mystery. I cannot thank you enough, sir! You did a service to us all.
He certainly did.❤
I’d say the majority of people had lead poisoning back then, especially those in the upper class. And beatings were considered a normal way to educate a child. So he didn’t really have it much worse than anyone else in that time.
Lead poisoning, mercury poisoning, arsenic poisoning, etc. It's amazing that he survived as long as he did.
the lead theory has been posited for many decades...
white lead was used as a sweetener in the very wines that B was known to have preferred...
and he loved his wine...this comfirms the theory.
white lead is lead carbonate an hydroxide salt of lead...a white powder
Lead acetate is sweeter that sugar, very little after-taste...I ought to know, I made some!
Added to wine (like the Romans liked!), it adds a sweetness without the cloying aspects of sugar or honey.
Grappa is what the Romans called wind sweetened by Lead...some called lead acetate 'sugar of lead'.
How did he get poisoned?
In his day, they used arsenic in wallpaper glue as insecticide...bugs would eat the glue unless it was poisoned.
White and red lead were used as makeup, wigs were powdered with arsenic...bugs in wigs was a thing.
A common belief of the time was that small amounts of toxic substances were beneficial.
Homeopathy, with toxic heavy metals...
Bingo! Nailed it.
It was also used as a cosmetic. It hid facial scarring from smallpox and all kinds of other flaws.
@@ChelleLlewes yes!..it had many many uses that resulted in intimate bodily contact...in B's case he DRANK it
I heard that they had exhumed his body, and inside the casket, they found his unfinished symphony. It appeared to have been erased from the bottom up. After much deliberation, the scientists concluded that all this time, he had been de-composing.
Badum tsst 🥁
Stop! 😄
Hahahahaha
Lol
Interesting but, considering the era, not an overwhelming surprise.
This report is incredibly dumbed-down. They tested two locks, one contained 258 and another 380 micrograms per gram of hair. Normal would be around 4 micrograms per gram. The report doesn’t mention where the lead could’ve come from, but a lot of commenters do: from the wine he drank (sweetener), water pipes, fish he ate, pencils he chewed on, medicine, etc.
Interestingly, they also managed to sample two-thirds of his genome. His genes revealed he was genetically predisposed to liver disease and had hepatitis B at the time of his death. One genetic variant, in particular, would have tripled his risk for liver disease.
The fact he died from liver disease is pretty well established. This new research (which was already done decades ago on not only his hair but his skull) suggests lead was a contributing factor, but that was already clear from research, given the fact that everyone around that time, particularly in cities, was exposed to high doses of lead.
They also found high levels of arsenic and mercury in his hair.
very cool (the research, not the health problems)
I wish Schroeder could find out about this.
You're thinking a public anti-lead campaign back in the 60s? ;-)
it’s crazy to think that back in the day there wasn’t known diseases like today, you’d just die from “upset stomach” and everyone was like “yup that makes sense”
He was Van not Von, his antecedents were Flemish.
What a liar, he was Von not Van.
I caught that
@@ronlacker326
He was indeed a VAN.
@@shizukagozen777 Nah
@@ronlacker326
Yes.
If he asked about that, and finally an answer was given, then probably his soul had found some peace
Not one commenter remembers lead-based paint and gasoline, not very long ago. Memories like gnats. Sad.
The population in Vienna around 1800 when Beethoven was in residence was about 20,000. Why didn't an epidemic of lead poisoning sweep through the city?
The population was at least 500,000. The population of Austria was approximately 3M in 1800.
It probably did but no one recognized it as such. 🇺🇸
A real tragedy - we could have had a larger corpus of really great music
That is a lot of Lead, lead was put on and in everything, and made into water holding vessles including pipes that we still use today, but our exposure is minimal. They had white power everything, house walls, medicines, personal care, and flooring. Its a funny or humor element.
“….white power”???
@@brianfergus839 lead oxide is a white powder.
@@brianfergus839 To lighten a lady's complexion. It was a very common practise for high society women to paint their faces with white lead.
@@ChelleLlewes ok so he meant “powder”??
@@brianfergus839 OH!!! 😂 I just realized I missed it not once, but twice! 🤣
I need my eyes checked...😛
Yes...powder! 😁
Beethoven was so forward-thinking to task the medical profession with trying to identify what made him so ill during his life. A multi-faceted genius.
Brilliant. Thank you to all involved.
Fascinating!
Whenever people say they wish they could live in a later time I wonder why. I cant imagine dying or getting really sick off of something and having no research or anyone who knows why your sick or dying.
Lead crystal goblets were common for the upper class all over europe in that era. W.A. Mozart had a similar issue.
In 2001 the book, Beethoven’s Hair was published. Same conclusions.
I thought I remembered that.🇺🇸
When they mentioned hair I guessed it was lead.
Remember, arsenic and mercury were also commonly used in "medical" treatments for just about everything, including syphilis and tuberculosis.
Old news from 60 years ago . My grandmother told me this . She said they taught her this in school .
Ouch. The past was dangerous.
Back then, the rich men and women powdered their face which contained lead ladies bleed themselves to get very pale face!
So is the present, for different reasons. It has always been a dangerous world.🇺🇸
Outstanding.
Outstanding ❤❤❤❤❤❤
He was literally the "heavy metal" of classical music ☠
I LOVE Beethoven!!!!
Wow. Amazing. He was such an interesting and complex man.
Fascinating
this could inspire us to study our own HTMA results. Minerals and metals are so interesting.
Lead makes you a great composer!😊
That's a truly Awesome Discovery! It's a real Tragedy that this wasn't known in Beethoven's early life so the lead poisoning could have been avoided altogether. but I don't know if people even knew that lead poisoning existed back then. All the torment Beethoven went through in his life was needless, as far as the physical health debilitations go :/
I was aware of this as a theory long ago. Beethoven was poor, and he would have eaten from a lot of lead supper ware, such as plates, bowls, and cups, just like many others. What a composer! Writing such uniquely creative music that we accept it as "normal", but it really is not very normal at all, and so all the more interesting and profound!
You got it backward. The rich ate off of lead plates, bowls, cups, etc. Beethoven had a lot of wealthy patrons and was pretty wealthy as a result (his name having the suffix "van" likely helped with the patrons as it implied royalty even though Beethoven was not royalty).
@@karlrovey Thank you!
Well, they left out the crucial info about how he might have gotten lead poisoning.
Water pipes, pewter plates, food (from the added water), medicine,.....
Incredible song and touching video! Well done and thank you for standing up for the truth, Isreal and indeed the world thank you!
Lead weights have been used in piano keys. They helped the key return to its position. I imagine if you're really into a piano you don't just tune it you adjust the weights.
So He was the "Lead Zeppelin" of his Day ???
Excellent punny humor!
🤣🤣🤣 And you just claimed THIS day! 🤣🤣🤣
groan
Don't quit your day job
@@matt92550 Whats a " day-Job"..lol
One important question that the news report doesn’t mention : Does anyone happen to know when (I.e. at what age) the locks were collected?
(That is it would make a great difference to the proposed conclusions if the the locks were cut, post-mortem, from Beethoven’s corpse, as opposed to if they were cut, say, when he was in his twenties.)
Thanks
When he died they all got in and cut off bits of hair .... many people received bits of his hair from friends to royalty ...
good point
@@ahill4642 Not really relevant. If it was unusable the lab would have said so. Clearly it was.
Deafness doesn’t sound like a typical symptom of lead poisoning.
Deafness doesn't sound at all, if I dare to say
Recent research has indicated a connection between kidney problems and hearing loss. Sounds strange, but the medical science is there
@@suemoore984 I went into Stage 4 kidney disease due to side effect from medication and I lost much of my hearing. I could still hear but everything was muffled so much that I could barely hear faint noise when my husband was 6 feet away speaking to me. It was very disorienting since it came on suddenly. Luckily, I stopped the medication even before the doctors realized it was the cause and regained some renal function but there was irreversible damage. Thankfully, I regained my hearing but was left with constant tinnitus.
My grandmother suffered from hearing loss and her liver produced too much cholesterol. The physician treating the cholesterol prescribed a different medication and after a while her hearing had improved. By reviewing changes in her other medications, that doctor understood why and told her that it was a sometimes experienced side effect. When she returned to her cholesterol doctor, she asked if he knew that. He told her that he did but that he hadn't foretold her because he didn't want to get her hopes up if it didn't happen or wasn't noticeable to her. Organ problems present in many different ways.
Hmmm… Wasn’t this information discovered a long time ago? I could be mistaken, but I *_think_* they mentioned it in the Music History class I took way back in 1979.
This story is nearly 23 years old, and was reported first in the book, _Beethoven’s Hair,_ by Russell Martin….so why are we hearing about it now, as though it’s a new discovery??
No, the hypothesis is 23 years old. This story is new, because a new lab test was performed. Awful lot of confused people commenting on this video.
I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering what kind of man Beethoven would have been if he had been healthy. Sometimes genius emerges as a response to life challenges.
Hey "reporters" -
Where did this lead come from?
Water pipes, pewter, and crystal, for starters. They all contained huge amounts of soluble lead.
@@ChelleLlewes
Crystal ?
@@shizukagozen777Heisenberg was Austrian
@@omnirath
What ?
@@shizukagozen777 Yes. Lead crystal was particularly beautiful, and was often used in glass making when I was a child. I recall when it became known that lead tended to leach out of such crystalware and into whatever drink or food it contained. My family disposed of all our lead crystal glasses and dishes, though many held onto their beautiful pieces of lead crystal in the hopes that a "fix" would come along. More and more became known about it's damaging effects over time though, and the last time I encountered it was at a formal dinner in the mid 1970's.
Beethoven also helped create new taverns, inns and public houses for drinking ale. Yes, he loved opening bars 🍻🍺
Thanks!
Wow!!!! History nerd here! Extremely interesting!!!! I have a daughter who will soon be 30 and she has several health issues including severe stomach issues with excruciating pain daily yet over all these years since she started having issues as a toddler, NO ONE can seem to figure it out so she was told a few years back that seeing they have no clue as to why she’s had to suffer for so long that they’re just labeling “it” as IBS. I pray constantly that soon she’ll find a solution and I certainly hope that it won’t be after she’s left this realm before they find it. 😞🙏🏻
Does she have any autoimmune diseases or food sensitivities?
Is this breaking news? I thought it had been known for around 25 years at least?
Well, I've known it since the sixties...
A fascinating book was written about the detective work done 20 years ago or so, called "Beethoven's Hair", l think.
at least. the guy who bought the sealed, enclosed hair at auction paid something like 35 grand US for it. then he sent it for analysis. this isn't new news, and this "organization" claiming CREDIT for it is o;ne example of the BS in todays' reality remanuf. the real story, and grabbing the claim.
It may have been speculated, but now it is known.
@@kenbob1071 It has been KNOWN for decades.
AS a lover of classical music and playing the violin since i was 10 I played many of his compositions and now to find out this on why he past just adds to the wonder of this man and his talent and drive to create such beautiful and timeless music .
Most of us consider it to be Classical, but it was Rock and Roll to them. They innovated, motivated, were imitated and inspired jealousies just as musicians do today. They were the musical stars of their time. How many of today's musicians will still have their work performed hundreds of years from now? I am a rocker at heart, but I adore Beethoven and Mozart.
@@agneslong2323 I have played the violin since the age of 10 i'm 67 now .And i recently acquired another violin it was in sad shape but after repair's it sings sweet so i call it my lady and she's about 550 years old not bad for a 30 dollar buy from an antique shop and 800 dollars for repair .
That's great! So where was the lead coming from, and when?
lead plumbing leaching into drinking water; lead paint used by artists and painters; lead in medicines and cosmetics; kids exposed to lead soldiers, toys etc. Toxicity known since 2000 BC
Its unfortunate so many great composers have left behind no family to carry their names.
The last person with the Beethoven last name passed in the early 1900's.
His hearing loss was from him having Smallpox when he was younger.
The lead acetate was used in wine I believe as a preservative and sweetener, so with his consumption of wine that toxic condition was most likely from that.
I always thought it was either lead or mercury poisoning.
His death is mysterious but I’d hardly call it one of histories biggest mysteries. We don’t know a lot of historical figures real cause of death because doctors didn’t really know how when the person died. I feel like the whole of the dark ages is a much larger mystery just to name one.
I thought there was a debate about whether these were really his hair samples or not?
I wish we still had writers of this caliber, now computers are taking everything over.
This isn’t new news at all! There was literally a book written about it called Beethoven’s hair published in 2000. They had done testing on the hair and found the high levels of lead. They ascertained a lot of bowls and plates were made of lead back then and it leeched into the food.
Sadly lead is a perfect element for many reasons/ uses chemically speaking. Except that somehow we never evolved to metabolize it, to great misfortune
Lead is depleted uranium.
@@johnwattdotcawhere did you learn that?
I don't think any thing can metabolize lead, it's poison to anything taking it in. The cells read it as calcium, but no cell can metabolize it and the cell dies
@@proudatheist2042 Gold is depleted lead. I learned this from a video documentary.
@@johnwattdotcalead is a form of spent deteriorated uranium, gold is just gold its formed in volcanoes
So Beethoven was into heavy metal (s) back then ..cool
What if he’s the original troll, and he was never deaf
Shocker! Lead was used in everything.
Yes
Your songs are the best 😂
Historians: Store items to show them to the world.
Scientists: Collect items to tell their facts to the world.
Both professions ensure a balanced life.
I’d love to know more!!!
This theory has been around for over 20 years.
Hair in the ears, yes!
He had a lot of lead in his pencil.
Not funny. Not amusing.
What an odd thing to come away with from this video. Are you 13?
@@wendybutler1681 cry more cry baby
He used to chew the ends of pencils ...
Pretty sure that the DNA of almost anyone from that Era would show the same results.
I wonder what he was using/consuming that had so much lead in it that wasn't affecting everyone else around him to the same degree.
Well, Dr. House was correct once again. It wasn’t lupus. (But it was an obvious guess for me - even before starting the video - that lead would be involved.)
And Lupus, along with Fibrio Myalgia is often a diagnosis CLAiMED by the very patient, and no one else. It's subjective and not really provable. I know a (HOT) set of identical twins, and one "claims" to have Lupus. She doesn't work. The other works, and is very healthy. And YES, the one claiming Lupus is a CHAIN SMOKER. the live together, eat the same food. I think I know what her "problem" is.
Am I the only one who finds it odd that people kept hair from people who lived hundreds of years ago? How on earth did people back then know to pass it down for generations to come? Why hasn’t this been done for other famous people who lived centuries ago? Or has this been done?
Hi Julie, I believe people have always kept hair of their relatives. I still have hair from my daughter when she was a baby and she's middle-aged now (lol). The Victorians would weave the hair of their dead relatives into pictures and other memorabilia; it was almost a fetish with them. People today put the ashes of their loved ones in jewelry. I suppose it's a way of keeping a small piece of someone you loved.
Apparently, nobody has read Beethoven's Hair by Russell Martin published in 2000 ...
It didn’t cause his hair to fall out. At least he didn’t go bald in his old age like the rest of us.
Cool!
Beethoven today: ''Gee.. thanks.''
This is amazing! I never knew locks of his hair were kept and have been tested. But the high levels of lead in his system aren't explained. Where would ot have come from?
It's been well known for decades that the Lead based make up he used, caused deafness, mental/cognitive dysfunction and loss of life. The rumors that need to be cleared up are 1) that he was not born deaf, but deafened later in life after he had been composing for many years. 2) That while there is no written medical documentation of the progression of his deafness it's all there in his music. You just have to be smart enough or lucky enough to analyze it.
Maybe he chewed the end of his pencils? Just looked it up this minute and He Did! 😂
Pencils are made of graphite not lead.
Pencils are NOW made of graphite with no lead in the US. It was always cheaper to make them out of graphite since the 16th century. So lead never was wide spread in pencils it seems other than maybe to paint the outside of them. Doesn’t mean this dude didn’t chew on lead or things with lead paint. Some are in the habit to put things in their mouth that they shouldn’t.
Well documented. Thanks.😮😅
I think Napolean died the same way stomach problems caused by the lead in the wallpaper in his exiled home
We went out for a Night of Beethoven recently. Turns out it was a cover band.
The lock of hair was 59 kg.
It would be interesting to find put how he managed to consume so much lead. Lead pipes for water was commonplace in many buildings. Food was less contaminated or processed than it is now. So discovering the source of this would complete the picture
Yup
It was because his name was written in the Deaf Note.
We have living hungry people and the focus of your kind surrounds the dead showing those who pay attention you are the dead walking among the living
Oh, he died? RIP Beethoven.