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Napoleon was poisoned: toxicological study
STRASBOURG - Napoleon Bonaparte was murdered by arsenic poisoning and did not die naturally of a stomach cancer, according to a new toxicological study which attempts to end long running historical controversy.
For International Napoleonic Society (INS) spokesman Jean-Claude Damamme the new study by Dr Kintz has produced "the definitive proof of the criminal poisoning of Napoleon". Napoleon died aged 51 in 1821, on the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic, where he had been banished after his military defeat by British and Prussian forces at Waterloo. A previous analysis of Napoleon's hair, conducted by Dr Kintz in 2001, had found abnormally high levels of arsenic. However supporters of the natural death theory said the arsenic could be explained by environmental factors such as the winemakers' custom at that time of drying their casks and basins with arsenic. The shrinking size of the emperor's trousers was also used to support the death by stomach cancer theory in a Swiss study which concluded that the emperor lost more than 11 kilos (24 pounds) during the last five months of his life. Dr Kintz in his latest study used sophisticated new chemical techniques to analyse hair samples, taken by Napoleon's servant Abraham Noverraz and General Bertrand, who was deported to St Helena with the emperor. The new techniques perform a simultaneous analysis of 30 different metals and can distinguish between the organic and innocuous form of arsenic, found in crustaceans, and its toxic metallic variety, which was not possible previously. The toxic form of arsenic, used for centuries as rat poison, was found in Napoleon's hair samples at 37 to 42 times above the normal level in the new study. "I can't imagine Napoleon fed himself rat poison, even if he wasn't a gourmet," joked Damamme of Montreal-based INS. "The arsenic was in the 'spinal cord' of the hair, which implies that it came from the blood and food ingested," he said. Damamme further discounted the wine theory saying Napoleon "drank little, at the most one glass per day, and then mixed it with water". "Somebody in his circle gave him arsenic in small doses to poison him little by little to avoid another violent uprising by those who still supported the emperor in France," Damamme said.
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