No more Beethoven?

Doc Martin says:

No Beethoven to discuss? You have not yet discussed his fascinating medical history, his illnesses, diagnoses, the appalling treatment he received from those “doctors” of his, his appalling living conditions resembling Steptoe & Son. (Actually he would have suited the Holyland in Belfast!)

The fact that he could afford to send for an attending doctor, rather than spend time in the dreadful General hospital in Vienna. He was in point of fact resurrected twice, once in 1863 and again 1888, the latter was to move him from Wahring to the Zentralfriedhof so he would end up amongst the Great and the Good.

During his second resurrection and auld fella obsessed with dead bodies by the name of Anton Bruckner was present who created an awful scene, he held Beethoven’s skull aloft asking why were you so deaf?, Apparently his glasses fell into the coffin! They are apparently still there inside, the late Prof Gerhard Kramer informed me.

Here is a potted medical history of Beethoven, by Mai presented at a meeting I attended in Edinburgh some years ago.

https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/sites/default/files/t_100506_a_mai.pdf

Hepatic failure being the main cause of death, he probably had Crohn’s disease and most likely Paget’s disease.
The Beethoven Genome project at Cambridge is presently carrying out some interesting research, we might have him sequenced soon.
https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/2020/04/the-beethoven-genome-project/

(Doc Martin is a retired GP, based in Belfast, an amateur composer, antiquarian and Irish harpist)

Doc Martin says:

Beethoven even before he went to Vienna often complained of diarrhoea and vomiting. He most likely had recurrent gastroenteritis, possibly Salmonella, E coli or viral related, given the very poor hygiene standards of the period, food and water would be of questionable quality. Crohn’s disease is also very probable.

I seem to recall reading somewhere ( it was a translated German memoir of Ferdinand Ries I think) a report of a visit he made to Beethoven in some digs he was living in Heiligenstadt and saw several overflowing unemptied night pots under his piano and what looked like a bad attack of the skitters in the outside privy.