Post mortem: Essays, historical and medicalMacLaurin, C. (Charles)
History
Post mortem: Essays, historical and medical
MacLaurin, C. (Charles)
Biography; Pathology
The autopsy showed beyond cavil that the cause of death was cancer of
the stomach, and it is difficult to see what more Antommarchi could
have done in the way of treatment than he did, although certainly an
irritant poison like tartar emetic would not have been good for a man
with cancer of the stomach, even if it did not actually shorten his
life. But Napoleon was not a good patient. He had seen too much of
army surgery to have a great respect for our profession; indeed, it is
probable that he had no respect for anybody but the Emperor Napoleon.
He, at least, knew his business. He could manœuvre a great army in the
field and win battles--and lose them too. But even a lost Napoleonic
battle--there were not many--was better managed than a victory of any
other man; whereas when you were dealing with these doctor fellows you
could never tell whether their results were caused by their treatment
or by the intervention of whatever gods there be. Decidedly Antommarchi
was the last man in the world to be sent to treat the fallen, but still
imperious, warrior.
The symptoms of impending death seem to have been masked by a continued
fever, and probably Antommarchi was not really much to blame. This idea
is to some extent borne out by a couple of specimens in the Museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons, which are said to have belonged to
the body of Napoleon. The story is that they were surreptitiously
removed by Antommarchi, and handed by him to Barry O’Meara, who in his
turn gave them to Sir Astley Cooper. That baronet handed them to the
museum, where they are now preserved as of doubtful origin. But their
genuineness depends upon whether we can believe that Antommarchi would
or could have removed them, and whether O’Meara was telling the truth
to Sir Astley Cooper. It is doubtful which of the two first-mentioned
men is the less credible, and Cooper could not have known how
untruthful O’Meara was to show himself, or he would probably not have
thought for one moment that the specimens were genuine. O’Meara was
a contentious Irishman who, like most other people, had fallen under
the sway of Napoleon’s personal charm. He published a book in which
he libelled Sir Hudson Lowe, whose hard fate it was to be Napoleon’s
jailer at St. Helena--that isle of unrest. For some reason Lowe never
took action against his traducer until it was too late, so that his own
character, like most things connected with Napoleon, still remains a
bone of contention. But O’Meara had definitely put himself on the side
of the French against the English, and it was the object of the French
to show that their demigod had died of some illness endemic to that
devil’s island, aggravated by the barbarous ill-treatment of the brutal
British. We on our side contended that St. Helena was a sort of earthly
paradise, where one should live for ever. The fragments are from
_somebody’s_ ileum, and show little raised patches of inflamed lymphoid
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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