Eager docs led to Boney’s death

French conspiracy theorists suspect Napoleon was slowly poisoned, either by the British or by his confidante, Count Charles de Montholon, who was supposedly in the pay of French royalists opposed to the Emperor’s return. The scientific evidence for this is a chemical analysis, conducted in 2001 on a lock of Napoleon’s hair, that found huge traces of arsenic.

But, according to next Saturday’s issue of the British weekly New Scientist, all are wrong. ‘‘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.

Every day, doctors gave Napoleon an enema to relieve his symptoms of a sick stomach and intestinal cramping. This, combined with regular doses of a chemical called antimony potassium tartrate to induce vomiting, would have left him short of potassium.

This can lead to a lethal heart condition known as Torsades de Pointes, in which the blood flow to the brain is disrupted by irregular heartbeats. Karch’s theory is that any arsenic in Napoleon’s body would have made him more vulnerable to torsades. —(PTI)