It also means that Alexander was buried alive. That explains why Plutarch described his body as remaining “pure and fresh” for days.
Hall thinks Alexander was pronounced dead a full six days before he actually died. Thus, with his pupils dilated and apparent lack of response to stimuli, doctors assumed he was dead - when his mental faculties were completely intact. And since Alexander was paralyzed, his body required less oxygen and his breathing was kept to a minimum. She suggested that Alexander contracted the rare disorder from a Campylobacter pylori infection, the “most frequent cause for GBS world-wide.”īack in the fourth century B.C., doctors didn’t use a patient’s pulse to diagnose death - they used breath. “The combination of ascending paralysis with normal mental ability is very rare and I have only seen it with GBS,” said Hall.
According to History, the rare autoimmune disorder can lead to fever, abdominal pain, and paralysis - which, to Hall, seems to exactly fit Plutarch’s account of Alexander’s death. Katherine Hall of the University of Otago in New Zealand posited in the Ancient History Bulletin that Alexander suffered from Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS). If she’s right, then his demise was a real-life horror story.
Richard Mortel/Flickr One scientist believes she’s cracked the case of the death of Alexander the Great, depicted here in a statue from the third century B.C. His cause of death, however, has remained a mystery for millennia - but one doctor recently thought she cracked it. Eventually, 32-year-old Alexander was pronounced dead. In fact, according to one theory, the ancient king’s body didn’t decompose because he wasn’t actually dead yet.Īlexander the Great may have been the most famous person in history to be buried alive.Īccording to Plutarch, an ancient Greek historian who wrote his Parallel Lives hundreds of years after Alexander’s reign using many secondary sources, the Macedonian conqueror died in 323 B.C.Īfter a 24-hour drinking spree, he came down with a fever and felt a sudden pain in his back “as though smitten with a spear.” Pretty soon he was paralyzed, and soon after, he was rendered speechless. His loyal followers believed this was clear confirmation he was a god, but modern scientists have since posited otherwise. When Alexander the Great’s body failed to decompose six days after his death, the ancient Greeks were in awe.
Wikimedia Commons Alexander the Great died at age 32 after suddenly - and mysteriously - succumbing to full-body paralysis.