Tag: Beethoven

New research confirms that Beethoven had lead poisoning — but it didn’t kill him

sarah JonasResearch Results

To this day, no one knows for certain what caused the liver and kidney disease that led to Ludwig van Beethoven’s untimely death. However, a new letter to the editor in the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine’s (ADLM’s, formerly AACC’s) journal Clinical Chemistry rules out one popular theory, showing that the composer was exposed to lead levels that were high — but not high enough to kill him.

Beethoven’s Genes Reveal Low Predisposition for Beat Synchronization

sarah JonasResearch Results

Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most celebrated musicians in human history, has a rather low genetic predisposition for beat synchronization, according to a Current Biology study co-authored by Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and the Max Planck Institutes for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.