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

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. 

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