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A new report by a Kiwi toxicologist makes the claim that Alexander the Greta was killed by being poisoned from drinking wine made from a toxic plant called [color color=rgb(51, 51, 51)]Veratrum album[/color]. He says the symptoms described in the ancient sources match almost perfectly with the symptoms caused by this plant, a member of the lily family. It sounds plausible to me and what I like best is the guy admits that while he may be right, the fact is we will never really know what killed him. Only that Alexander died in mysterious circumstances (cue ominous music).
I read that after I saw the link from Drudge, and it seems Drudge may have over-reacted by putting the link on his site. I don't think what this scientist is saying is anything that helps us make a definitive statement. I was looking through the article to see if they actually did lab tests on remains linked to Alexander (though it would have been a surprise to me if any such remains existed) and I was a bit bummed when I didn't see such information. It's just information which we can add to the long list of potential explanations, based in science, which could explain historical phenomena but which cannot presently be verified.
From the article the guy came to his conclusions by examining existing textual evidence. Alexanders body has never been found to my knowledge. I don't think that makes his conclusions invalid though. Even the toxicologist admits he is only proposing a theory that can never b proved.
That's true – he does essentially say that he is just proposing a theory. I know the two of us have debated this kind of thing in the past, and curiously we each seem to switch sides of the fence on the issue of archaeology/historical knowledge from time to time. I guess the thing that made me a bit disappointed was that the story was on Drudge, so I thought it would be more than just a theory. I mean, there must be numerous theories proposed by scientists and others who have attempted to explain historical issues (the proposal that Akhenaton had Frohlich's syndrome because of his distinct facial/body features is one such example) and these are not on Drudge, or given much attention on most mainstream news outlets.I suppose just taking the story at face value, though, it is noteworthy.
