WHAT MADE BEETHOVEN DEAF?
Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827) is regarded as perhaps the greatest of musical geniuses. He composed nine symphonies and was planning the tenth while on his deathbed. His many great musical accomplishments are even more astounding when one considers that he suffered from progressive deafness throughout his early life. He became fully deaf at age 29. Astounding too is the fact that after becoming fully deaf, Beethoven’s compositions became even more free and imaginative. Medical historians believe that Beethoven suffered from Paget’s disease. Writing in the JOURNAL OF BONE MINERAL RESEARCH in 1999, Dr. E. Monsell and colleagues from the Henry Ford Sciences Center in Detroit point out that characteristic of Paget’s disease is a “loss of bone mineral density in the cochlear capsule [which] is associated with both a high-tone hearing loss and a low-tone air-borne gap”. According to Dr. P.D. Shearer of the St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, writing in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF OTOLOGY
