Interesting is that the doctor did not do it purposely… It has founded by analysis of hair of the large type-setter, taken shortly after his death, which made it possible to understand that the medical treatment which it followed undoubtedly completed…
It is following hepatic problems that Ludwig van Beethoven died out in Vienna on March 26, 1827. For four months, it had suffered from important intestinal oedemas which had led its doctor, Andreas Wawruch, to carry out four punctures to extract Emphysema interns, most important having evacuated 17 liters…
However, for several years, of the studies had shown that Beethoven had been victim of an intoxication to lead. Which disease thus carried the large German type-setter?
To draw the business with light, Doctor Christian Reiter, chief of the service of forensic medicine at the medical university of Vienna was interested in two hair coming from wicks cut by close relations on the body from Beethoven, just after his death. However, a hair incorporates in its root a little of the components of blood. Its work and its conclusions have been just published in Beethoven Journal and the Science review.
Fatal bandages
By spectroscopy technology, Christian Reiter detected four very high lead peaks corresponding to the dates of the punctures of Doctor Wawruch (which published thereafter a detailed report of the care that it lavished to the musician). This coincidence is explained very well. To disinfect the wound caused by the needle, the doctor applied lead a coated salt bandage, a standard technique at the time.
Doctor Reiter specifies that this exposure to lead would not have killed a man in good health but it was undoubtedly fatal in Beethoven, very weakened by his disease (perhaps a cirrhosis of the liver).
The preceding studies suggesting an intoxication with lead, also detectable in the skeleton, indicate that this metal, without it being known how, entered the life (and the body) of Beethoven well before the bandages of Doctor Wawruch, known doctor, famous violoncellist and large admiror of the type-setter.
