Was it lead that snuffed out one of the greatest musical minds the Western world has ever known?

While that's been an ongoing theory since Ludwig van Beethoven died in 1827, a new study dismisses the idea.

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York announced this week they had measured lead levels in two fragments of Beethoven's skull and have decided it's unlikely that the heavy metal killed the great composer.

But what did kill him remains a mystery. What is known is that Beethoven died painfully and slowly at the age of 56. In his final weeks, he wrote letters complaining of digestive trouble, extremely bad breath, abdominal pain and colic.

When his autopsy revealed a badly damaged liver, several theories about his death emerged, including alcoholic cirrhosis, infectious hepatitis, syphilis, and lead poisoning.

The poisoning theory stems from Beethoven's reputed love of wine, which was often sweetened with lead back in Beethoven's time. (Strange but true; lead apparently masks bitterness.)

Beethoven is also said to have drunk from a goblet made partially of lead and stayed at a spa where he drank potentially contaminated mineral water.

Then in 2005, tests on strands of Beethoven's hair and a tiny piece of his skull revealed high levels of lead. The leader of that study, William Walsh, an expert in forensic analysis and chief scientist formerly with the Pfeiffer Treatment Center in Warrenville, Ill., said at the time: "There's no doubt in my mind... he was a victim of lead poisoning."

But now a new research team is questioning those findings.

The team, led by Andrew Todd, an associate professor of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, measured the amount of lead in two bone fragments taken from Beethoven's skull. He worked alongside researchers from the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University.

They used a sophisticated imaging technique called x-ray fluorescence (XRF), which uses a small radiation dose to make the lead stored in bone give off x-rays, which are then recorded in a radiation detector.

The larger skull fragment that Todd's team tested was found to have only 12 micrograms of lead per gram of bone mineral.

"For someone who was Beethoven's age, we would expect more than that; one comparison dataset predicts 21 micrograms of lead per gram of bone mineral," Todd said in a news release.

His team also tested a smaller skull fragment, which registered considerably more lead: 48 micrograms per gram. Todd said he could not explain the difference and said further testing of small fragments is underway.

Todd notes that 95 per cent of lead in the adult body is stored in bone, where it stays for years, even after death.

"Measuring the amount of lead in Beethoven's bone fragments allows us to reach back through time to measure his lead exposure during life," he said.

Hair, on the other hand, can show lead exposure only from the last several months of someone's life.

It's possible that the readings revealed in 2005 reflected a treatment Beethoven had undergone in his final months to heal a wound from surgery. (He underwent numerous procedures to drain fluid from his abdomen.) Those wound treatments might have used salves that contained lead.

Todd said while it's possible Beethoven "was acutely intoxicated" by the salves, it's unlikely the treatment would have killed him.

As for the theory that Beethoven drank lead-contaminated wine, Todd thinks that's unlikely too. He notes that only cheap wines used lead to mask bitterness and records reveal Beethoven would have had the means to drink finer wines.

The forensic testing revealed in 2005 also included tests on skull fragments that showed large amounts of lead. But Todd's team notes that those x-rays examined only the surface of the bone fragment. Todd tested the same fragment but also examined the complete thickness of the much larger skull fragment.

Todd believes his tests safely rule out the theory that lead poisoning killed Beethoven.

He says the full results of his tests will be published soon.