Ronald Wharton writes:

>Beethoven's deafness, whatever the cause was, was a sensorineural hearing
>loss, not a conductive hearing loss, as would be the case if there were a
>problem with the ossicles.  This is clear in Beethoven's own descriptions
>of his hearing loss dating back to the late 1799s, in which he describes
>difficulty with high pitched sounds, and with certain vowels (ref:
>Thayer's Life of Beethoven, ed.  Forbes).

Earlier.  In the Heiligenstadt Testament Beethoven suggests that it had
started in about 1796/97.  The first sign seemed to have been tinnitus,
immediately followed by a declination of the hearing.  However, it stayed
on the same level until about 1812/13.  Then it worsened.  Again it stayed
on the same level.  Until about 1816/17.  Then it worsened and obviously
quite suddenly.  This time the process didn't stop.  In about 1824
Beethoven was almost stonedeaf.  However, as late as 1825 he was still
able to hear the very high-pitched scream of a little girl.  As for the
cause:  consensus is still far away.  Frimmel, a doctor and one of the
best biographers Beethoven ever had, firstly voted for post traumatic
sensorineural, but later on he changed his opinion and suggested syphilis.
Schweisheimer, a doctor, returned to sensorineural, though caused by a
disease.  Jacobsohn, also a doctor, strongly disagreed.  He became the
most ardent defender of the syphilis hypothesis.  That was the beginning
of a heated discussion that lingered on until the fifties.  Then it stopped
for some decades.  In the eighties the discussion revived and these days
it's a hot topic again.  See below for a short list of the diagnoses,
suggested by the various medical experts over the years:  1.  post
typhus/meningitis (Weissenbach, 1816, after a talk with Beethoven himself)
2.  post traumatic sensorineural (Frimmel, 1880) 3.  syphilis -
meningiovascular (Jacobsohn, 1910, followed by Frimmel) - congenital
(Koz-Forest, 1905) - early (McCabe, 1958) 4.  sensorineural, maybe caused
by an unknown disease in about 1787 (Schweisheimer, 1923) 5.  otosclerosis
(Sorsby, 1930) 6.  vascular insufficiency (Stevens/Hemenway, 1970) 7.
cochlear otosclerosis (Stevens/Hemenway, 1970, they changed their minds)
8.  Paget's disease (Naiken, 1971) 9.  iatrogenic (Gutt, 1970) 10.
otosclerosis (Neumayr, 1987) 11.  cochlear otoscleroris (Bankl/Jesserer,
1987) 12.  auto-immune sensorineural (Davies, 1988) 13.  mixed conductive
and sensorineural, worsened by the doctors themselves (O'Shea, 1990)
And lead poisoning is the dernier cri, suggested by Walsh last year and
strongly denied by Davies in the latest issue of The Beethoven Journal.
I give this hypothesis little, very little chance.

Joyce Maier (mail to: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask])
www.ademu.com/Beethoven