Baby Beethoven Must've Used a Mattel Piano...

[Superman4ever]

http://www.comcast.net/music/index.jsp?cat=MUSIC&fn=/2007/08/28/749768.html&cvqh=itn_beethoven

VIENNA, Austria - Did someone kill Beethoven? A Viennese pathologist claims the composer's physician did _ inadvertently overdosing him with lead in a case of a cure that went wrong.

Other researchers are not convinced, but there is no controversy about one fact: The master had been a very sick man years before his death in 1827.

Previous research determined that Beethoven had suffered from lead poisoning, first detecting toxic levels of the metal in his hair and then, two years ago, in bone fragments. Those findings strengthened the belief that lead poisoning may have contributed _ and ultimately led _ to his death at age 57.

But Viennese forensic expert Christian Reiter claims to know more after months of painstaking work applying CSI-like methods to strands of Beethoven's hair.

He says his analysis, published last week in the Beethoven Journal, shows that in the final months of the composer's life, lead concentrations in his body spiked every time he was treated by his doctor, Andreas Wawruch, for fluid inside the abdomen. Those lethal doses permeated Beethoven's ailing liver, ultimately killing him, Reiter told The Associated Press.

"His death was due to the treatments by Dr. Wawruch," said Reiter, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Vienna's Medical University. "Although you cannot blame Dr. Wawruch _ how was he to know that Beethoven already had a serious liver ailment?"

Nobody did back then.

Only through an autopsy after the composer's death in the Austrian capital on March 26, 1827, were doctors able to establish that Beethoven suffered from cirrhosis of the liver as well as edemas of the abdomen. Reiter says that in attempts to ease the composer's suffering, Wawruch repeatedly punctured the abdominal cavity _ and then sealed the wound with a lead-laced poultice.

Although lead's toxicity was known even then, the doses contained in a treatment balm "were not poisonous enough to kill someone if he would have been healthy," Reiter said. "But what Dr. Wawruch clearly did not know that his treatment was attacking an already sick liver, killing that organ."

Even before the edemas developed, Wawruch noted in his diary that he treated an outbreak of pneumonia months before Beethoven's death with salts containing lead, which aggravated what researchers believe was an existing case of lead poisoning.

But, said Reiter, it was the repeated doses of the lead-containing cream, administered by Wawruch in the last weeks of Beethoven's life, that did in the composer.

Analysis of several hair strands showed "several peaks where the concentration of lead rose pretty massively" on the four occasions between Dec. 5, 1826, and Feb. 27, 1827, when Beethoven himself documented that he had been treated by Wawruch for the edema, said Reiter. "Every time when his abdomen was punctured ... we have an increase of the concentration of lead in the hair."

Such claims intrigue others who have researched the issue.

"His data strongly suggests that Beethoven was subjected to significant lead exposures over the last 111 days of his life and that this lead may have been in the very medicines applied by his doctor," said Bill Walsh, who led the team at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago that found large amounts of lead in Beethoven's bone fragments. That research two years ago confirmed the cause of years of debilitating disease that likely led to his death _ but did not tie his demise to Wawruch.

"I believe that Beethoven's death may have been caused by this application of lead-containing medicines to an already severely lead-poisoned man," Walsh said.

Still, he added, samples from hair analysis are not normally considered as reliable as from bone, which showed high levels of lead concentration over years, instead of months.

With hair, "you have the issue of contamination from outside material, shampoos, residues, weathering problems. The membranes on the outside of the hair tend to deteriorate," he said, suggesting more research is needed on the exact composition of the medications given Beethoven in his last months of his life.

As for what caused the poisoning even before Wawruch's treatments, some say it was the lead-laced wine Beethoven drank. Others speculate that as a young man he drank water with high concentrations of lead at a spa.

"We still don't know the ultimate cause," Reiter said. "But he was a very sick man _ for years before his death."

The Beethoven Journal is published by the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California.

 

[Mysterio]

http://www.beethovenshair.ca/flash.html

 

[Superman4ever]

Whoa, nice!

 

[Dwarf lord]

57 really wasn't all that untimely in 1827...

 

[Superman4ever]

57 really wasn't all that untimely in 1827...

True, but then again he wasn't a peasant.

 

[Ghostvirus]

So how does a man sitting in his moms basement doing nothing, but playing video games, differ from a man who has spent years trying to figure out what killed Beethoven?

 

[StorminNorman]

So how does a man sitting in his moms basement doing nothing, but playing video games, differ from a man who has spent years trying to figure out what killed Beethoven?

A piece of paper that says Ph.D. on it

 

[Mister J]

...and a severe case of Nintendo thumb.

 

[Caliber]

57 really wasn't all that untimely in 1827...

Weren't people lucky to live that long back then?

 

[Superman4ever]

A piece of paper that says Ph.D. on it

t:

Lets not forget a 6-figure salary.

 

[Ghostvirus]

A piece of paper that says Ph.D. on it

At least the guy in the basement isn't wasting a perfectly good education on something as trivial as this.

 

[Superman4ever]

At least the guy in the basement isn't wasting a perfectly good education on something as trivial as this.

I wouldn't consider solving the death of one of the elite figures in human history as "trivial".

 

[Ghostvirus]

I wouldn't consider solving the death of one of the elite figures in human history as "trivial".

How is it not?

1. If he was killed. Doesn't matter, because I am willing to bet big money the person who killed him is dead.

2. How he died isn't going to change the genius of his music.

Unless his death is some how related to the cure of a virus we currently have. Then yes it is trivial. Finding out how he died changes nothing. Absolutely nothing. This "scientist" just wasted years of his life he could have devoted to something that helps the living. I would be willing to bet Beethoven would feel the same.

 

[Superman4ever]

How is it not?

1. If he was killed. Doesn't matter, because I am willing to bet big money the person who killed him is dead.

2. How he died isn't going to change the genius of his music.

Unless his death is some how related to the cure of a virus we currently have. Then yes it is trivial. Finding out how he died changes nothing. Absolutely nothing. This "scientist" just wasted years of his life he could have devoted to something that helps the living. I would be willing to bet Beethoven would feel the same.

Ugh, this argument is just juvenile. Using your logic then why do scientists study the extinction of the dinosaurs? It happened 250 million years ago, how does it affect us now? Why study Da Vinci's work or his life? What's the point of History? It's all past mistakes we just tend to ignore, right?

What does his death have to do with his music? And it's not a matter of bringing someone to justice, as you implied it's a 200 year old mystery.

If you actually read the article you'd realize that this guy is NOT some crack-pot twiddling away in his basement. He's the head of Forensics Medicine at Vienna's Medical University. This was NOT (because I too am willing to bet HUGE money on this fact) his only project. Moreover, and I'm willing to bet HUGE money on this, most of the scientists conducting the actual experimentation on Beethoven's hair samples were most likely STUDENTS who were using this "trivial" waste of time as a learning experience. That's how most university based research works. Students do the work or application of method (or most of it), your superior instructs and manages the project. So, this "trivial" project just taught half-a-dozen medical students to become pathologists. Not so trivial, huh? And be honest with yourself if you're a M.D./Ph.D student how COOL would it be to say that you solved the mystery of Beethoven's death? Do you know how HUGE something like this on a resume would look to the medical/research community?

I'm starting my second year in med school and ALL of my teachers have side-projects that interest them. Whether you think they advance the quality of life for the living is irrelevant...it's what they wish to explore, and through their guidance we learn the applications necessary to practice medicine in the real world.

 

[Ghostvirus]

Ugh, this argument is just juvenile. Using your logic then why do scientists study the extinction of the dinosaurs? It happened 250 million years ago, how does it affect us now? Why study Da Vinci's work or his life? What's the point of History? It's all past mistakes we just tend to ignore, right?

What does his death have to do with his music? And it's not a matter of bringing someone to justice, as you implied it's a 200 year old mystery.

If you actually read the article you'd realize that this guy is NOT some crack-pot twiddling away in his basement. He's the head of Forensics Medicine at Vienna's Medical University. This was NOT (because I too am willing to bet HUGE money on this fact) his only project. Moreover, and I'm willing to bet HUGE money on this, most of the scientists conducting the actual experimentation on Beethoven's hair samples were most likely STUDENTS who were using this "trivial" waste of time as a learning experience. That's how most university based research works. Students do the work or application of method (or most of it), your superior instructs and manages the project. So, this "trivial" project just taught half-a-dozen medical students to become pathologists. Not so trivial, huh? And be honest with yourself if you're a M.D./Ph.D student how COOL would it be to say that you solved the mystery of Beethoven's death? Do you know how HUGE something like this on a resume would look to the medical/research community?

I'm starting my second year in med school and ALL of my teachers have side-projects that interest them. Whether you think they advance the quality of life for the living is irrelevant...it's what they wish to explore, and through their guidance we learn the applications necessary to practice medicine in the real world.

You are making a lot of assumptions out of that Article. No where does it say he was doing this as a side project. It does not give any credit to students to discovering this. The article gives the appearance that this was his main source of research.

That is what I am basing my opinion on. It appears that he only worked on this project. If that is the case, then in my opinion he has so far wasted his education.