HAIR APPARENT

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Ludwig van Beethoven probably thought he was taking his secrets to the grave when he died in 1827. He thought wrong. While the composer was decorously interred in his beloved Vienna, most of his hair wasn't; souvenir-hunting fans snipped off so much of his silver mane before burial that he went to his tomb almost bald.

What does a posthumous haircut have to do with secrets? Forensic scientists have long known that a body's hair has tales to tell. To begin with, it carries DNA, which can be used to determine family relationships (that's how scientists determined that a woman named Anna Anderson was not, as she claimed, Princess Anastasia of Russia) or hereditary diseases (that's how they hope to prove Lincoln suffered from Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that makes its victims grow tall and gangly). Hair also soaks up drugs and other foreign substances from the body (low levels of arsenic in Napoleon's hair established that the ex-Emperor probably wasn't poisoned, as some historians believed).

Now it's Beethoven's turn, thanks to two Arizona music lovers. They bought a lock of hair at an auction in 1994, and have offered it for scientific analysis. So far, researchers have learned that the composer didn't have lice and didn't take morphine for his kidney stones or his cirrhosis of the liver. They're still looking for traces of mercury and lead, either of which could have caused his famous deafness; the former would be an especially juicy find, since mercury in those days was used to treat syphilis, which some scholars think Beethoven may have had. They'd also like to know if he took any medicine for the terrible diarrhea he reportedly suffered; his hair might reveal that too. It won't help anyone better appreciate the Ninth Symphony. But it might make for some highbrow gossip.

--By Michael D. Lemonick