Main description:

A fascinating 'whodunit' with tales of intrigue and scandal. The Apocalypse of Napoleon Bonaparte deals with his health from Waterloo when he was a fit and active man, until is death on St Helena almost six years later. Allowing the patients to speak for himself through the writings of the the doctors who actually attended him, it is the only hope left to us of arriving at the correct diagnosis of Napoleon's ills, and this is precisely what Dr Robert Richardson has done. His story is drawn from the day-to-day accounts of the four doctors to whom this applies. This detailed consideration of Napoleon's life on the island reads like a whodunit and contains plenty of intrigue and scandals concerning those around him and leads to the conclusion that the condition most apparent at the time of his death was a bleeding gastric ulcer. However, the most important thing the day-to-day history has to tell us is that Napoleon had become seriously dehydrated. The consequent metabolic effects resulted in what today might well be termed multiple organ failure. This is a truly unique account of Napoleon's last days.