The Strange Case of Killer Green: Was Napoleon Murdered by Accidental Design?

Almost from the moment that Napoleon Bonaparte drew his last breath in May 1821, medical experts and historians have argued about the cause of his death at the age of 51.

Was it cancer, as officially reported? At least one doctor present at the postmortem examination disagreed, claiming it was hepatitis. Other experts have suggested syphilis or tuberculosis or malaria. Some even believe that former emperor was assassinated – poisoned by an enemy.

It now seems likely that none of these illnesses caused his death, and there is no evidence that anybody did, or tried to, kill him. In 1982, however, more than 160 years after Napoleon’s death, a respected British chemist unearthed evidence that the great man was indeed poisoned – but by a thing, not a person. And that thing may well have been the wallpaper in his house on St. Helena, where the British had exiled Napoleon in 1815.

St. Helena is a hot and humid volcanic rock jutting out of the Atlantic Ocean some 1,200 miles off the west coast of Africa. Longwood House, where Napoleon resided his French officers and servants, was a single-story building so damp that the paper on its walls was moldy and peeling..