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Napoleon killed by medics and enemas, study claims
There was no plotting by royalists, no arsenic and no murder. Instead, Napoleon Bonaparte by doctors and too many uncomfortably large enemas, according to a new study.
One of the world's most enduring conspiracy theories may be laid to rest if research conducted by the San Francisco medical examiner's department proves accurate.
An autopsy performed straight after Napoleon's death, by his personal physician, revealed that he had died from stomach cancer. But over the decades historians this explanation, suggesting either that the exiled leader have died from toxic ingredients in his hair ointment, or was killed by his confidant Charles de Montholon as part of a plot to prevent his returning to power in France.
But after a detailed study of the medical records kept during the illness that blighted most of Napoleon's years in exile on St Helena, where he banished after his defeat at Waterloo, forensic pathologists in California have focused on the daily enema he had to the pain caused by the cancer.
"They used really big, nasty syringe-shaped things," Steven Karch, head of the researchers, told New Scientist magazine.
In the final crisis of Napoleon's illness, five English doctors were brought in to see him. They gave him regular doses of antimony potassium tartrate to make him vomit. But this treatment would have depleted his potassium levels, and may have caused a lethal heart condition in which rapid heartbeats the blood flow to the brain, the scientists say.
The doctors' decision on May 3, 1821 to administer a purgative of 600mg of mercuric chloride, is five times the usual amount, would have further reduced his potassium levels. It may have been fatal. He died two days later, aged 51.