Was Napoleon poisoned or did he die of stomach cancer?
Antommarchi’s autopsy report is very complete and shows Napoleon’s general state of health at his death, notably a chronic stomach ulcer and pulmonary lesions linked to tuberculosis. Cancer cannot be diagnosed because of a lack of histological evidence from the stomach lining. At any rate, one does not die ‘of cancer’, one dies of the effects of the cancer on the organism. Analysis of the emperor’s hair and the discovery of high level of arsenic therein poses several questions. But it is intellectually impossible to accept the theory of death by arsenic poisoning. First of all, we can never be 100% certain that the hairs analysed come from Napoleon. Furthermore, the level of arsenic could be interpreted in different ways, notably the methods of analysis and the ways of calculating the levels used by the toxicologists (numbers obtained weighed against the number of hairs analysed: in fact, very few hairs have been analysed.
