The army officer was supposedly in the pay of French royalists worried that Napoleon would return to France. Montholon could have poisoned the emperor by putting arsenic in his wine- an idea that was bolstered by the discovery of arsenic in locks of Napoleon's hair collected after his death. Now forensic pathologist Steven Karch at the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Department and his team have come up with the idea that it was medical misadventure that finished Napoleon off. Every day the doctors gave Napoleon an enema to relieve his symptoms. "They used really big, nasty syringe-shaped things," Karch says. This, combined with regular doses of antimony potassium tartrate to make him vomit, would have left his body seriously short of potassium, which can lead to a lethal heart condition called "torsades de pointes" in which bouts of rapid heartbeats disrupt blood flow to the brain.
Any arsenic in Napoleon's body, which may have come from coal smoke and other sources in the environment, would also have predisposed him to torsades, but on its own is unlikely to have pushed him over the edge, Karch says. The final straw was probably 600 milligrams of mercuric chloride given as a purge. This was five times the normal dose, and would have depleted his potassium levels further. Napoleon died two days later. None of this convinces Phil Corso, a retired doctor from Connecticut who is a strong proponent of the cancer theory. "It is really far-fetched when you think about it," he says. Napoleon had clearly been ill for a long time and his doctors are unlikely to have made much of a difference, Corso says.
This article appears in New Scientist issue: 24 July 2004
PLEASE MENTION NEW SCIENTIST AS THE SOURCE OF THIS STORY AND, IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO: http://www.newscientist.com
"These articles are posted on this site to give advance access to other authorised media who may wish to quote extracts as part of fair dealing with this copyrighted material. Full attribution is required, and if publishing online a link to www.newscientist.com is also required. Advance permission is required before any and every reproduction of each article in full - please contact celia.thomas@rbi.co.uk. Please note that all material is copyright of Reed Business Information Limited and we reserve the right to take such action as we consider appropriate to protect such copyright."
Author: James Randerson