Being exhumed centuries after death from a council car park is not the most regal of postscripts. But now researchers have revealed to the world that King Richard III had worms.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The humpbacked monarch's remains were rediscovered last year, buried under a car park in northern England.
Richard's battle-scarred skeleton was unearthed and identified after DNA taken from the remains matched samples taken from a distant living relative.
He was vilified in Shakespeare's Richard III - unfairly, many believe - as a murderous hunchback. "Thy broken faith hath made the prey for worms," the evil king is told by an accuser.
Reporting in The Lancet on Wednesday, scientists from the Cambridge and Leicester universities say it appears the controversial king, who ruled England between 1483 and 1485, was infected with roundworm. Analysis of the soil around his pelvis using a powerful microscope revealed multiple roundworm eggs. However, eggs were not found in soil samples taken from the area around his skull.
Piers Mitchell from Cambridge's department of archaeology and anthropology said soil surrounding the burial site was also tested and only a few eggs were detected. Roundworm eggs were at their highest concentration in the soil near the pelvis, where the intestines would have been before they decomposed.
Dr Mitchell, who led the research team, said the roundworm eggs were from a genuine infection and not due to external contamination caused by the later dumping of human waste in the area.
The researchers also looked for other kinds of intestinal parasites, such as tapeworm, but failed to find any in the samples.
"We would expect nobles of this period to have eaten meats such as beef, pork and fish regularly, but there was no evidence for the eggs of the beef, pork or fish tapeworm," Dr Mitchell said.
"This may suggest that his food was cooked thoroughly, which would have prevented the transmission of these parasites.”
Roundworm infections are common in temperate or tropical regions of the world, including Australia.
The parasite is contracted when consuming food, water or soil contaminated with the microscopic eggs. Once ingested, the eggs hatch into larvae which migrate to the lungs, where they mature.
They then crawl up the airways to the throat to be swallowed back into the intestines, where they grow into adults. A female roundworm can grow up to 30 centimetres in length.
Most infected people have no symptoms, although serious complications can include intestinal obstruction.
Killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, Richard III remains the last English monarch to die in battle.
His death ended the "War of the Roses," the civil war between the families of Lancaster and York named after their respective heraldic symbols of the red and the white rose.
With AFP
