Science This article is more than 18 years oldTrousers button up the mystery of how Napoleon met his final Waterloo
This article is more than 18 years oldOne of the enduring mysteries of Anglo-French history may finally have been solved by scientists - thanks to some pairs of trousers.
For years, debate has raged over exactly how Napoleon met his early death while in British-imposed exile on the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, where he was banished after Waterloo.
Although an autopsy indicated gastric cancer the verity of the report was questioned after arsenic was later discovered in the roots of his hair. Various culprits have been suggested - his inept doctors, the British, and even his wallpaper.
Now, however, a team of Swiss scientists finally appear to have laid the mystery to rest after closely examining the French emperor's trousers.
Scientists from the University hospital in Basel's anatomical pathology department and from Zurich University's institute of medical history looked at 12 pairs of Napoleon's breeches which he wore during the six years he lived in exile.
They measured the waists, and also studied the measurements of living patients with stomach cancer.
The largest pair of trousers Napoleon wore had a waist measurement of 110cm; those he wore just before his death in 1821 measured just 98cm.
This, the researchers claim, showed he had lost a significant amount of weight - as did the living patients, who lost between 11kg and 15kg over the six months that they were studied.
Their conclusion confirms the original postmortem on Napoleon, which stated that the cause of death was abdominal cancer.
"We are sure that the autopsy report speaks clearly in favour of gastric [stomach] cancer," said Alessandro Lugli, of the University hospital in Basel, yesterday.
The theory that Napoleon might have been assassinated first emerged in 1840, when his body was returned to France for reburial.
There, traces of arsenic were found in the ex-emperor's hair roots. Yesterday the Swiss team said that the presence of arsenic could be explained by the fact that Napoleon liked a drink - and 19th-century winemakers used to dry their casks and basins with arsenic.
Others scientists, though, have said that Napoleon's doctors gave him the arsenic to make him vomit.
One theory even suggested that the wallpaper at Napoleon's home in exile, Longwood House, could have been to blame. Arsenic was recently discovered in the former emperor's specially redecorated rooms there.
Yesterday Dr Lugli, whose study appeared in the American Review of Human Pathology, told the BBC that, evidence of the trousers notwithstanding, the debate was still unlikely to go away.
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