[MUSIC] Napoleon had a remarkable career. He started out as an ordinary artillery officer in the French army. He rose through the ranks to become a General. He became Dictator of France. He then promoted himself to Emperor of France and at the same time controlled most of the continent of Europe. He spent most of his career fighting wars and he was finally defeated in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. After that battle, he went into exile and the British sent him into exile as far away as possible, to the little island of St. Helena down in the South Atlantic. And he lived out the last years of his life on St. Helena dying in 1821. When he died, he was in his 50s. And for someone who had a fairly tough life riding around battlefields in the early 19th century, that was quite a respectable age. But even so, after his death, rumors started to go around that his death may not have been entirely natural. But there was no way to confirm or deny these rumors. There was no evidence. And Napoleon's body had eventually been taken back to France and had been given a grand funeral and nobody's going to be allowed to open up his tomb to do an analysis. However, we do have some artefacts from Napoleon. We have some samples of his hair. It was a rather strange fashion back in those days that when anyone famous was dying, after they died, some of their hair would be snipped off and kept as a souvenir. So you can imagine Napoleon lying there on his death bed surrounded by his courtiers and his doctors and his attendants. All of them with a pair of scissors ready, waiting for the last moment. Well, back in 1952, some of these hair samples were analyzed using neutron activation analysis. And from the results of that analysis, it was claimed that arsenic was present in the late emperor's hair. The obvious conclusion then, if there's arsenic in Napoleon's hair, Napoleon was murdered by arsenic poisoning. Well, if this is a murder, what's the motive? And certainly there were many people in the world who would have a motive for getting rid of Napoleon. The British for instance, have spent many years and a vast amount of money in fighting the Napoleonic wars, to break this man's control of Europe. While the French government at the time was made up of all of Napoleon's enemies, who really, really would not want him to come back. So, if you are looking for motive in murdering the emperor, they're not hard to find. Now some years later, a British chemist called David Jones asked a very very interesting question. He asked the question, what color was Napoleon's wallpaper? Now, he happened to ask this question on a radio show. And one of the listeners contacted the radio station and said they knew what color Napoleon's wallpaper was. And not only did they know what color the wallpaper was, they actually had a piece of the wallpaper. Well, this seems very strange at first, until you realize the special position of the Island of St. Helena. Before the construction of the Suez Canal, any ship sailing from England to India, or Australia, or to Singapore, or other parts in the Far East, would call in at St. Helena. Mainly to get fresh food and fresh water to continue the voyage, but also to give any passengers on the ship the chance to get on dry land and stretch their legs. So in those days, the island of St. Helena would actually have quite a lot of visitors. Many, many more than it does nowadays. Now St. Helena is not rich in tourist attractions. But, of course one of the tourist attractions is the house that Napoleon used to live in. And back in the early 19th century, the souvenir shop had not yet been invented. So these visitors to the island would help themselves, sometimes, to their own souvenirs. And apparently, some of them, when visiting Napoleon's house, just pull off a strip of the wallpaper to take away with them as a memento. And it was one of these souvenirs that had been preserved. Now, why did David Jones ask this interesting question, what color was Napoleon's wallpaper? He had the idea that the arsenic and emperor didn't come from any poison put in his food or drink. He thought it may have come from the wallpaper. So they got the sample of wallpaper and sent it for analysis. Now this is a historic sample, so, you can't destroy it. You can't take it and dissolve it in acid and test it by atomic absorption spectroscopy because the owner is going to want the thing back. Now one of the advantages of SEM-EDX, is that it is non-destructive. You can analyze your sample and it's unaffected. Another advantage of SEM-EDX of course, is that you can look at specific microscopic objects within your sample. And David Jones was particularly interested in the particles of green pigment on this piece of wallpaper. Now why was he interest in green? Because in the 19th century, one of the commoners methods to get a good green pigment was to use a chemical called Copper arsenite. And sure enough, when the green part of the wallpaper was analyzed by SEM/EDX. It confirmed the presence of arsenic. Now, if there's arsenic in the wallpaper, how does it get from the wallpaper to Napoleon? And the answer comes from the climate of St. Helena. St. Helena is subtropical, it's warm, it's humid, it's a great place for mold to grow. And some species of mold have evolved the capability to digest arsenic. So some of these molds are able to take arsenic and convert it into volatile forms of arsenic, such as arsine which is a gas. So that is how the arsenic could’ve got from the wallpaper to the Emperor, he could’ve breath it in as he lay on his deathbed. So who killed Napoleon? Well, we have further evidence. We have the autopsy results, and the autopsy tells us that he died from stomach cancer. We also have eyewitnesses, because he was attended by his courtiers and his doctors, and some of whom wrote books and recorded what they saw. So who killed Napoleon? Well, it would probably stomach cancer, but his doctor certainly didn't help. Because of one of the standard drugs given in those days was the extremely poisonous compound mercury chloride. So we can't say that his doctors murdered him. But they certainly didn't do him any favors with the way they were treating him.
