A Swedish scientist has come within a whisker of proving that Napoleon was murdered by the British at St. Helena.
Per Engstrom, a physicist working at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, has found eight times the normal amount of arsenic in a strand of hair purported to have been taken from the head of Napoleon moments before he died in 1821.Engstrom's finding will delight those historians who argue that Napoleon did not, as history books claim, die from stomach cancer but that he was murdered by slow arsenic poisoning.
However, aware that Napoleon's locks are almost as ubiquitous as chunks of the Berlin wall, Engstrom refuses to say whether the arsenic was ingested. It may have been the result of contamination from the arsenical vapors emanating from Napoleon's wallpaper.
Engstrom, who spent four weeks examining the strand using a technique known as X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, said he examined a 62-millimeter (2.48-inch) length of hair.
"I took samples every half-millimeter. Most of the hair contained arsenic at a rate of two parts per million - but 20 millimeters from the root, I found eight parts per million. I then tested my own hair and found no traces of arsenic," he said.
Napoleon's hair is a subject of inordinate interest, not only in laboratories. Recently Phillips, the London auction house, sold a box of locks for $5,800.
Last year, the FBI conducted a test similar to Engstrom's on another sample but found no arsenic.
Engstrom was commissioned by Professor Rene Maury, a Napoleon enthusiast and author of the book "L'Assassin de Napoleon."
Keen to avoid sparking off a new Napoleonic war, Engstrom said: "We don't know what levels of arsenic were normal 170 years ago; neither do we know very much about Napoleon's diet or what contamination he may have been subject to."
He added: "I can't even guarantee that this hair belongs to the man."
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service