[log in to unmask] writes:

>What was the cause of Beethoven's deafness? He seemed to have liver issues
>when he died...but Solomon offers no medical explanations for the cause of
>death or even the deafness. Anyone care to explain more? Thanks

Probably the deafness was caused by one of the most common causes of
deafness worldwide: otoscleroris, a disease of the bones of the inner
ear.  Also possible is cochlear otosclerosis, which is rare compared to
otosclerosis of the hearing bones, but would fit better to Beethoven's
symptoms.  However, since the bones of both inner ears were removed the day
after his death and never examined, there's room for doubt.  Unfortunately
the bones got lost and stayed lost to this very day.  Without an
examination of these bones every diagnosis is a speculation.  It's not
difficult to fill a whole bookcase with digressions on the cause of
Beethoven's deafness and mysterious bowel troubles as well!  The dernier
cri is lead.  Hypothesis: Beethoven suffered from lead poisining, which
caused not only liver cirrhosis (the cause of his death, beyond any doubt),
but also deafness.  I find the hypothesis highly unlikely.  Otosclerosis,
cochlear or not, is to be preferred.  But there are other possibilities and
without those lost bones we'll never have certainty.

I read this rather late but I wanted to respond to this subject.  In simple
terms it is not possible for Beethoven to have otosclerosis a disease of
the middle ear-not inner ear.  The maximum hearing loss to be caused is
50 to 60db, that is in the moderate range.  This is a conductive loss not
involving the inner(cochlear+nerves) ear.  In other words, if the sound was
loud enough it would have vibrated through Beethoven's head directly to the
inner ear.  B would have heard conservation if people had simply raised
their voice like someone shouting in anger.  Clearly, this was not the case
for Beethoven.  It is possible as Joyce Maier pointed out, that in B's case
it started out as otosclerosis of the middle ear then progress to inner ear
hear(cochlear+nerve)and in this case his hearing loss would be defined as
a mix hearing loss.  It would have been the nerve loss that gave B most
of his trouble as it affects the very heart of hearing (understanding
speech+musical notes) and best describes his condition.  The other kind is
sensori-neural hearing loss involving only the inner ear and this is the
number 1 type of loss most people due to aging, noise exposure, and various
heredity diseases.  So whether B's father beat the crap out of him and
started the chain that would affect his hearing or he inherited a defective
gene (or both played a part) I felt that it is essential to understand this
is not some great mystery.  The question is whether B had a conductive,
sensori-neural, or both(mix) and from all the information we have it leads
to sensori-neural or mix and this eliminates the otosclerosis of the middle
ear disease(conductive).

I admit that I have not read everything on B deafness but any ear
specialist who studies B's case would figure out what type of loss he had
without knowing why he got the disease.  I suffer a conductive loss myself
but my inner hearing is fine so i wear hearing aids to "amplify the sound"
to my inner ear.  Naturally i took it upon myself to investigate B deafness
early on as an interest.  So being stone deaf is compatible with nerve
damage.

Glenn Miller