Stomach Cancer Was Napoleon's Waterloo

It is hyperspeculative, in fact sheer fantasy in my view, our main problem of today is we eat too much and don't exercise or work hard, as said above usually meat was dished out in raw for the soldiers and not as salted meat as in the ACW.

“The lack of knowledge was considered a possible explanation of the sudden and mysterious death of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1821. He began to suffer from recurrent episodes of fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, and persistent hiccupping two years before his death, when he vomited coffee-ground material, with progressive weakness, profuse sweating, sever hiccupping and tachycardia. In a lucid moment of his delirium, he asked his personal physician, Dr. Francesco Antonmarchi, anatomist and pathologist of Pisa University, to make an autopsy on his cadaver after his death and to examine his stomach, because gastric pathologies had caused the death of at least four of his relatives: grandfather, father, one sister, and one brother. He died few hours later for a massive bowel movement followed by a circulatory collapse…. During the Napoleon’s period, however, gastric cancers were formally unknown.”

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Background: Gastric adenocarcinoma is the fourth most common type of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in the world. Despite abundant traces of an ancient history, the comprehension of its pathogenic mechanisms is rather recent and continuously ...

“Prior to canning, which was first perfected in France during the Napoleonic War, salt was the most effective way to preserve the rations of an army in the field or a fleet at sea. Without pickled rations in barrels, troops couldn’t march and navies couldn’t sail….”

militaryhistorynow.com

“Although the use of salt provisions was problematic, they were vital in supplying Britain’s armed forces and sustaining its empire across the world.” By George Yagi FOR 18th CENTURY military commanders, salt often spelled the...

www.npr.org

Napoleon is credited with the phrase "an army marches on its stomach," but he probably never said it. Now 200 years after his legendary defeat, it's worth recalling his disregard for feeding his army.

As usual one has to find a balance in a diet. For Boney, I don't think he ate salted beet at all, I am not aware that it was part of the French armies meat supply, which was usually fresh meat and not in the lines as in the Navy or in the ACW.

Despite our state of medicine of today, people die of stomach cancer - also despite usually not eating salted meat, they aquire helicobacter pylori.

Presumably that would be the culprit. I'd bet Napoleon would have been eating that sort of food more often than Chicken Marengo.

Do we know anything about the occurrence of this cancer in Napoleon's peers, the marshals and generals, who, presumably, had a similar diet?

@John Cook The majority are listed as vague “mort de maladie” (or specific malady) which could mean anything: Bernadotte, Gouvion Saint-Cyr (apoplexy) Grouchy, Jourdan (cholera), Kellerman Lefebvre, Macdonald, Marmont (apoplexy), Moncey, Oudinot, Perignon,Sérurier, Soult, Suchet, Victor.

A few died from some lung disorder or another: Augereau, Davout, Masséna (tuberculosis),

Then there were those killed in various ways: Berthier, Bessières, Brune, Lannes, Mortier, Murat, Ney, Poniatowski

I think that's everyone.

I think the article specifies that in Napoleon's case there may have been a genetic predisposition to stomach cancer, that might not have been the case for the others.