- (AFP) -- The enduring mystery surrounding the demise
of Napoleon Bonaparte has just been given another twist.
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- The official verdict, supported by an autopsy, was that
l'Empereur died of stomach cancer on May 5, 1821, at the age of 51, while
in exile on Britain's South Atlantic island colony of St. Helena.
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- But French conspiracy theorists suspect that Napoleon
was slowly poisoned, either by the British, or by his confidant, Count
Charles de Montholon, who was supposedly in the pay of French royalists
opposed to the emperor's return to France.
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- The scientific evidence for that is a chemical analysis
conducted in 2001 on a lock of hair cut from Napoleon's hair after his
death that found huge traces of arsenic.
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- But, according to Saturday's issue of the British weekly
New Scientist, all are wrong.
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- "Medical misadventure" by Napoleon's over-enthusiastic
doctors was to blame, according to forensic pathologist Steven Karch at
the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Department.
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- Every day, the doctors gave Napoleon an enema to relieve
his symptoms of a sick stomach and intestinal cramping.
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- "They used really big, nasty syringe-shaped things,"
Karch said. This, combined with regular doses of a chemical called antimony
potassium tartrate to induce vomiting, would have left poor Boney perilously
short of potassium.
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- This can lead to a lethal heart condition known in English
as in French as "torsades de pointes" in which the blood flow
to the brain is disrupted by bursts of irregular heartbeats.
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- Karch's theory is that any arsenic in Napoleon's body
that may have come from smoke or other environmental sources would have
made him more vulnerable to torsades.
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- But that on its own would not have sent him to meet his
maker. Instead, the final straw would have been a massive 600-milligram
dose of a purgative, mercuric chloride, which would have sent his potassium
levels plummeting. Napoleon drew his last breath only two days after this
brutal treatment.
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- So has the arsenic puzzle been replaced by another mystery
ó the riddle of the sphincter?
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- Emphatically not, said Phil Corso, a retired Connecticut
doctor, who is an outspoken advocate of the cancer theory.
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- "It's really far-fetched when you think about it,"
Corso says, pointing out that Napoleon had clearly been sick for some time
and would have died from his tumor regardless of the treatment.
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- The autopsy was carried out by Napoleon's personal doctor,
Francesco Antommarchi, and was observed by five British physicians.
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- In October 2002, the conspiracy theory was given a knock
by the French publication Science et Vie (Science and Life), which took
arsenic readings from 19 hairs taken from Napoleon in 1805, 1814 ó
before he went into exile - and in 1821.
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- All the samples contained massive doses of arsenic, ranging
from 15 to 100 parts per million (ppm), compared with a normal level of
only 0.8 ppm of arsenic. The maximum limit considered safe is three ppm.
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- The most plausible source for this was hair restorer,
a product that in the early 19th century typically contained lots of arsenic.
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- In 1840, Napoleon's remains were taken back to Paris,
where he lies buried in a vast marble tomb beneath the gilt dome of the
Invalides military hospital.
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- Even then, the conspiracy theorists are still vocal.
A small group, led by lawyer Bruno Roy-Henry, believe that the British
switched the bodies for a laugh, gulling the French into burying a Bonaparte
lookalike.
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- Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040719/napoleon.html
-
-
- Comment
- From Tony Oatley
- 7-27-4
-
- Hi Jeff,
-
- I would like to comment on the above article concerning
the death of Napoleon. Firstly, I believe that Napoleon was poisoned, but
he was not poisoned by mercuric chloride that was allegedly administered
to him as a purgative in a 600mg dose. That is because mercuric chloride
is not normally used as a purgative.It is also known as 'corrosive sublimate'
and doses above 7.5 grains (approximately 487mg) would usually end in death
anyway.
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- Steven Karch is asserting that Napoleon was given a 'massive
600 milligram dose of a purgative, mercuric chloride'. If that in fact
were the case, I would argue that since Napoleon was already suffering
from chronic arsenic poisoning, and he was already being given tartar emetic
(antimony potassium tartrate to induce vomiting which is also toxic) he
would have surely been 'sent to meet his maker' but not because of 'torsades
de pointes' as Karch suggests - but because of the synergistic effect of
the poisons.
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- However, I would again like to add that Napoleon was
not given mercuric chloride at all - rather it was mercurous chloride,
otherwise known as calomel which was a favoured purgative at that time.
Whereas, mercuric chloride was mainly used in a dilute solution as an external
antiseptic because it is so toxic if taken internally - it is not called
'corrosive sublimate ' for nothing. It did have an internal use in the
treatment of syphilis in very small doses of 1/32 to 1/16 grain.
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- So, in nuce, it is far more likely that Napoleon Bonaparte
still died of poisoning after all, (and there were more poisons involved
than those mentioned e.g.'orgeat' a drink containing hydrocyanic acid that
the Emperor was given to quench his burning thirst due to the chronic arsenic
poisoning) and not the enemas depleting his potassium levels. I would argue
that the conspiracy theory still stands and it worked out in practice on
Napoleon Bonaparte in his last days on the British island colony of St.
Helena.
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- --Tony Oatley BA (Hons)
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