An account of the last illness, decease, and post mortem appearances of Napoleon Bonaparte : to which is added a letter from Dr. Arnott to Lieutenant-General Sir Hudson Lowe, giving a succinct statement of Napoleon Bonaparte's disease and demise.

  • Arnott, Archibald, 1771-1855.
Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of the last illness, decease, and post mortem appearances of Napoleon Bonaparte : to which is added a letter from Dr. Arnott to Lieutenant-General Sir Hudson Lowe, giving a succinct statement of Napoleon Bonaparte's disease and demise. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    disease; added to which, the duties of the soldiers in St. Helena were very severe, the strength of the garrison giving only one relief for night duty; and the working parties and fatigues were moreover very laborious on the days the men were off guard. But the officers who had httle night duty retained their health and strength as in Europe. I can therefore safely assert, that any one of temperate habits, who is not exposed to much bodily exertion, night air, and atmospherical changes, as a soldier necessarily must be, may have as much immunity from disease in St. Helena as in Eu- rope J and I may therefore further assert, that the disease of which Napoleon Bonaparte died was not the effect of climate. Schirrus or cancer of the stomach is ge- nerally an obscure disease,—I know of no certain diagnosis of it: nausea, vomiting, and obstinate costiveness, are usually present, but these sym- ptoms are also characteristic of other diseases of the chylopoetic viscera. Nevertheless, in the case of Napoleon Bonaparte, I did entertain a notion that some morbid alteration of struc- ture in the stomach had taken place. My at- tention was first drawn to this when I learned that his father had died of schirrus of the py-