History Online

World History Online | world history with timelines | historical topics | Online resources for historians

My Photo
Name:
Location: United States

Friday, January 26, 2007

Napoleon Killed by Stomach Cancer?

Napoleon died Bonaparte of a gastric cancer advanced rather that the arsenic envenenamiento, since some had speculated, the scientists of the opinion.


Comparing historical accounts with modern pathological methods and of the tumor-parking, the study refuted the theory that Napoleon died of the envenenamiento and the arsenic points to the gastrointestinal drain like the immediate cause of his death.


The man who dominated to much of Europe in diecinueveavo early century died in age 52 in exile Briton-imposed in St. Helena in the Atlantic of the south, in where he banished after its defeat in the battle of Waterloo. Per decades, the scholars have discussed how Bonaparte solved his early death the 5 of May of 1821.


The autopsy and the conclusion of its personal doctor, Francesco Antommarchi, indicated that Napoleon died of cancer of the stomach. But the veracity of the report of Antommarchi was asked in 1961, when the high arsenic levels were found in the hair of Napoleon. Finding raised many theories of the conspiracy, the treason and the envenenamiento. According to these demands, previous the French emperor was poisoned to prevent a return to the energy if he saved exile.


But with the tumor in a stage very outpost, the days that fought irremediably of Napoleon raises, an equipment of the E.E.U.U., the investigators of the Swiss and the Canadian disclose in clinical gastroenterology and Hepatology of the practice of the nature.


Roberto Genta, professor of the pathology and the internal medicine in the university of Roofing tiles to the southwest, and colleagues compared present images of 50 benign ulcers and of 50 gastric cancers whereupon Antommarchi she described like ?ulcerada gastric injury with the hardened borders, irregular that covered the stomach from cardia to the pilorica region.? ?Of this comparison that we concluded that the description of the injury of Napoleon was highly constant with the gastric cancer ulcerado,? to investigators he wrote.


Using a method and modern data of the tumor-parking from 135 gastric patients of the cancer, the equipment of Genta found that Napoleon had T3N1M0 at least, or the stage IIIA, gastric cancer. In fact, the autopsy and other accounts indicated that the cancer was great, the lymph nodes were present around the stomach, and there were no distant growth.


Even today, with the availability of the techniques and the sophisticated, patient surgical chemotherapies with the gastric cancer so advanced as Napoleon it has a poor prognosis,? said Genta in a sent declaration to the pressure. Although the father of Napoleon died of cancer of the stomach, the investigators think that a hereditary disposition to the disease was improbable. Something, the tumor was probably caused by a chronic infection of the p?loros, the Genta and the colleagues of concluded bacteria H.

The bad military put on a diet based on salt-preserved foods, and little in fruits and vehicles, she would not have helped. The new analysis matches a study of 2005 Swiss that dismissed the popular notion that Napoleon was obese at the time of the death - an improbable condition for a patient of the cancer of the stomach.


The examination of 12 pairs of trousers used by Napoleon between 1800 and 1821 down demonstrated that to Bonaparte thinned drastic in the six final months of its life, losing almost 5 inches of its waist and more than 24 pounds - to load the loss that would be constant with a diagnosis of the gastric cancer. ?This is a great study. Like forense pathologist and criminalistic, I see the result of this paper like perfect doctor-historical-foren reconstruction, Richard Dirnhofer, forense expert of the medicine of Bern, Switzerland, said the news of the discovery.

Huge Eruption May Have Been Bigger

One of the greater volcanic eruptions in file finishes obtaining greater. The volcanic zone of Taupo of New Zealand appears to have had twin eruptions only 20 miles of separated within days of one to does quarter-million years. Each eruption belched towards outside more than 25 miles cubical (100 kilometers cubical) of the rock and the volcanic ash. This one is the first evidence of the eruptions supervolcanic of the binocular.

"It is the possible one of these drove the other," geologist this Darren Gravley of the university of Auckland, New Zealand. But how driving it could have worked he is exactly uncertain. Which is clear of the explorations of Gravley and of his colleagues of the volcanic deposits of Mamaku and Ohakuri it is that he was created closely together in time. That is surprising, since most of the eruptions of the boiler or of the "supervolcano" in a any region they tend to be of thousands of ten years separate, or at least that one is the general concept until this moment. Between the samples that the rocks of the two eruptions were filled in one another one is the visible deficiency of the erosion in the first volcanic deposits - which it is pressing, considering the climate rainy.

The previous studies that watched only the dates of radioisotopo of volcanic rocks of the eruptions lacked the details of the synchronization, said Gravley, because a resolution has a margin of the error of 10,000 years - too low way. "You must watch the physical evidence," said Gravley. "It is really obtaining in the nitty-sandy one. Of stratigraphy (layers of the rock) it is to give exit to that two entered eruption at the same time. That as soon as any study (of the regional frequency) outside the water blows far." Burden and their colleagues have published their double discovery of the eruption in the last application the bulletin of the geologic society of America. The bad news are that the double eruption represents a new whole way that supervolcanoes can threaten humanity.

"This is by all means an edition important to consider for the volcanic risk," investigating this Gerald Aguirre-Diaz of the boiler of the Independent National University of Mexico in Juriquilla, Mexico. The eruptions of the boiler are far less frequent than other volcanos, but when they enter eruption, "the consequences for the environs and in general for the world would be enormous, because these explosive eruptions are many orders of the magnitude greater than an eruption commonest of a volcano, as St. Helens or Vesuvius of the assembly."

Were the Pyramids Made With Concrete?

Concrete one was spilled to construct great pyramids approximately 5,000 years ago, according to the controversial investigation, that suggests the old Egyptans predated the Romans by thousands of years as the inventors of the concrete one. Michel Barsoum, professor of materials who directs in the university of Drexel in Philadelphia, and colleagues disclose in the present application the newspaper of the society of American ceramics that the pyramids were constructed with a combination of stones and blocks carved of the concrete one stone-based.


The study, drawn in an investigation done in in the middle of the Eighties by the French materials scientific, Jose Davidovits, consists of a detailed examinaci of the samples taken from pyramids and their vicinity.


The aim was to determine if the materials of the pyramid are natural or synthetic. "Davidovits proposed that the blocks of the pyramid were thrown in situ, with a wet mixture of particles of the limestone stone and a folder, tamped in molds," wrote to investigators. In time, the demanded French scientist, the wet mixture hardened in a concrete one that offered the aspect and the characteristics of the native limestone stone. But the evidence lasts lacked theory Davidovits' and was rejected extensively by the community of Egyptologist.


The belief of many years is that the pyramids were constructed with the carved blocks of the limestone stone of next mines. The blocks were cut to form with the copper tools, they transported to the site of the pyramid and later they carried upon enormous inclines and of system in place using wedges and handles. Using the exploration and electronic microscopy of the transmission, Barsoum and its fellow workers, hug of Gilles of the aerospace agency national French of the investigation, and Adrish Ganguly of the university of Drexel, analyzed and compared the mineralogy of a number of samples of the pyramid with six diverse samples of the limestone stone of its vicinity.


They found that the samples of the pyramid offered the quotients mineral that did not exist in any sources known of the limestone stone. "The conviction of the discussion is the presence of amorphous SiO2," the news this Barsoum of the discovery. "On sedimentarias rocks, the SiO2 is crystalline almost always." It also observed that some samples of the calcite and the dolom'a taken from samples of the pyramid offered the catched interior of water molecules , he said, this is not again a phenomenon found in nature. The investigators think that a concrete one of the limestone stone, call geopolymer, was used for, at the most, 20 percents of the blocks in the external and internal covers and the superior parts of pyramids.


Davidovits, itself, stone-basing on the institute of Geopolymer in Saint proved a prescription makes specific. It concluded that the Earth diatomaceous (a ground formed by the decay of the very small organisms called the diatomeas), the dolomite and the lime was mixed in water to produce to clay-like mixture. This was what they would have spilled Egyptian the old ones in wood molds in Giza to obtain concrete blocks in some days.


In fact, with this prescription, Davidovits produced a great concrete block of the limestone stone in ten days. The investigators need that concrete one that he spills would have saved the old constructors to use escarped inclines to push stones the summit of pyramids. Zahi Hawass, head of the supreme advice of Egypt of antiques, dismissed the theory like "improbable." It observed that the concrete era widely used in pyramids in the modern work of the restoration, suggesting the equipment could have taken samples from these modern cuts.


But Barsoum rejected such critical. "It would have to be a complete and complete idiot to confuse the cement of Portland to which mountain range," he we said. Walker de David, geologist of the university of Colombia, said that Barsoum and the colleagues have a strong case when in view of the mineralogical constitution of shavings of the block they examined. "Both sides in this controversy have good points. Some blocks are definitively natural and some are not," said Walker, adding that the excess of the mystery how Egyptian the old ones could have spilled the concrete one it is "that captive more".