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18 May 2000 |
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When Napoleon died in exile on the island of St. Helena in 1821, was he poisoned by arsenic, or did he succumb to stomach cancer as his doctors said? The debate, smoldering for years, got a public airing this month in Paris.
Ben Weider, fitness equipment magnate and longtime student of Napoleon who runs the Montreal-based International Napoleonic Society, made the case for arsenic poisoning before a group of French historians, scientists, and politicians at a luncheon on 5 May, the 179th anniversary of Napoleon's death. He argues that Napoleon was quietly murdered--to prevent any possibility of his return to France--by infusions of arsenic in his wine. He says several hairs analyzed by the FBI in 1995 showed elevated levels of arsenic ranging from 20 to 50 parts per million. (The average today is about 1 ppm.) Accounts by those around Napoleon in his last years are full of allusions to physical problems--such as light sensitivity, hair loss, sleep problems, and neurological symptoms--consistent with arsenic poisoning, he says. Furthermore, he claims autopsy records show that Napoleon died fat, which is inconsistent with wasting away from cancer.
Officials of the Napoleonic Society of America, based in Clearwater, Florida, say Weider's arsenic theory is complete hogwash. Society president Robert Snibbe says there's no proof that the analyzed hair was actually Napoleon's, and that the general lacked one of the chief symptoms of arsenic poisoning: leathery palms and soles of feet. Philip Corso, a plastic surgeon at Yale University Medical School, says there were five extensive autopsy reports by eight doctors, all of whom agreed that Napoleon suffered from extensive stomach cancer. According to Corso, Napoleon's father died of gastric cancer, and he himself had predicted he would die from the same disease.
To resolve the identity question, Corso has given some hair strands to scientists at Pennsylvania State University, but he says they need much more hair to get any useful DNA. Meanwhile, Snibbe is trying to get permission to dig up a nephew of Napoleon's who is buried in Florida, to obtain some benchmark family DNA. All sides, of course, would love to settle the matter by disinterring the great man himself from his tomb at Les Invalides.
--CONSTANCE HOLDEN
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