On a stormy Monday in March 1827, the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven died after a long illness. Bedridden since last Christmas, he was hit by jaundice, his limbs and abdomen were swollen, and every breath was a struggle.
While his colleagues were busy sorting through their personal belongings, they found a document that Beethoven had written 25 years ago — a will asking his brother to reveal his condition to the public.
Today, it is no longer a secret that one of the world's greatest ** men has been largely deaf since he was in his forties. This is a tragic irony that Beethoven wants the world to understand, not only from a personal point of view, but also from a medical point of view.
The composer would have outlived his doctor by almost twenty years, however, nearly two centuries later, a team of researchers set out to fulfill his will in a way that Beethoven himself never dreamed of, through genetic analysis of the DNA in his hair.
In 2023, Johannes Krauss, a biochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, explained the findings: "Our primary goal was to uncover Beethoven's health problems, including hearing loss, which progressively worsened from the mid-20th century onwards, culminating in him becoming largely deaf in 1818." ”
The main cause of this hearing loss was never known, not even his personal physician, Dr. John Adam Schmidt. The tinnitus that began in his 20s gradually evolved into a reduced tolerance for loud noises, which eventually led to hearing loss of the treble and effectively ended his career as a performing artist.
There's nothing more ironic than that for a ** home. In a letter to his brother, Beethoven admitted that he was "suffering hopelessly" and even considered suicide.
In adulthood, he had to deal with hearing loss not only coping. Since at least the age of 22, he has been said to have suffered from severe abdominal pain and chronic diarrhea on a regular basis.
Six years before his death, the first signs of liver disease appeared, which is thought to have contributed at least in part to his death at the relatively young age of 56.
In 2007, a forensic investigation of Beethoven's hair showed that lead poisoning may have hastened his death, if not ultimately caused the symptoms that took his life.
This is not surprising given the culture of lead consumption in lead utensils and in medical treatment** at the time.
However, this latest study, published in March 2023, reveals the falsity of this theory, revealing that the hairs were not Beethoven's from the start, but those of an unknown woman.
What's more, the confirmation of the hair lock, which was more likely to come from Beethoven, confirmed that his death could have been the result of a hepatitis B infection, which was exacerbated by his alcohol consumption and multiple liver disease risk factors.
As for his other ailments?
We couldn't find a clear cause of Beethoven's hearing loss or gastrointestinal problems," Klaus said.
To some extent, we have more questions about the life and death of this famous classical composer. Did he contract hepatitis in **? How did a strand of a woman's hair come to be misrepresented for Beethoven's own over the centuries? What is hidden behind his abdominal pain and hearing loss?
This is an unfortunate result, considering that the research team was inspired by Beethoven's desire for the world to understand his hearing loss. However, there is an even bigger surprise hidden in his genes.
A comparison of the Y chromosome in the hair sample with modern relatives of Beethoven's paternal descendants further points to a mismatch. This suggests that extramarital sex existed in the generations before Beethoven was born.
This discovery suggests an extramarital event in Beethoven's paternal line between Beethoven's conception in 1572 at Hendrik van Beethoven in Camppenhardt, Belgium, and his conception of Ludwig van Beethoven in Bonn, Germany, seven generations later, in 1770," says Tristan Berg, a biological anthropologist now at the University of Cambridge in England.
For a young Beethoven, it could have been much more of a fate that he asked to write about. He would never have imagined that on that gloomy and rainy Monday night in 1827, after his friends and colleagues had cut his hair, such a secret would be kept.
The study was published in the journal Current Biology.
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