When Ludwig van Beethoven was near death, he demanded in writing that doctors study him and determine why he suffered from so many different health issues.

Now, more than 200 years later, researchers have done just that. All thanks to modern technology and just a little bit of Beethoven’s hair, there are answers to some, not all, of the questions he had wanted solved.

Beethoven died March 26, 1827. He was just 56 years old. 

Nearly 200 years after the German composer’s death, researchers pulled DNA from strands of his hair, searching for clues about the health problems and hearing loss that plagued him.

A new study being published in ‘Current Biology’ highlights what scientists found.

“With Beethoven in particular, it is the case that illnesses sometimes very much limited his creative work,” said study author Axel Schmidt, a geneticist at University Hospital Bonn in Germany.

And for physicians, it has always been a mystery what was really behind it.”

While scientists could not determine the reason for his deafness or the stomach problems that plagued him, they did determine that he had a genetic risk for liver disease, and was at the time of his death, infected with Hepatitis B, which would have damaged his liver even further.

The study cited these issues, as well as his alcohol problem, as the reasoning behind the liver failure that was likely the cause of his death.

Scientists had been given five locks of Beethoven’s hair that had been removed as a keepsake. They stated that the locks were “almost certainly authentic,” coming from the same European male.

They cleaned each single strand of hair, and then they were dissolved in a solution that allowed scientists to extract DNA, said study author Tristan James Alexander Begg, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge.

In a surprising discovery, the scientists also found that someone on Beethoven’s father’s side had an extramarital affair that ended up with a child being born, potentially even Beethoven’s own father. This led to a possibility of Beethoven being an illegitimate son.

But one answer the world wanted, why Beethoven was deaf, wasn’t able to be solved, said Ohio State University’s Dr. Avraham Z. Cooper, who was not involved in the study. 

However, Cooper said that unknown quantity is what makes Beethoven interesting.

I think the fact that we can’t know is OK.”

And while the unknown is OK, the study’s researchers believe that future technology could unlock more information.

“We hope that by making Beethoven’s genome publicly available for researchers, and perhaps adding further authenticated locks to the initial chronological series, remaining questions about his health and genealogy can someday be answered,” Begg said.

Watch below for more on Beethoven and this latest discovery.

Sources: PBS | Live Science