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.Another crew-member described how some of the men reacted to Hall s death. There sa stone off my heart, Budington is alleged to have said.Bessels, it wasclaimed, had said that Hall s death was the best thing that could havehappened aboard the Polaris and then laughed.For his part, Bessels testified about Hall s symptoms and the treat-ments the physician delivered.He said that Hall had suffered from astroke, and in response he applied mustard plasters and cold com-presses to the man s body and gave him purgatives of castor oil andthree to four drops of croton oil.He also injected quinine under Hall sskin.Only Meyer and Bessels said that Hall was paralyzed on one side.Others in the crew testified that he wasn t.The surgeons general whowere brought in to assess the testimony that Bessels provided agreedwith the physician s assessment and treatment.They concluded thatHall had died of a stroke, a diagnosis that fit with some of the symp-toms he had exhibited, including brief paralysis, slurred speech, erratic Polar Poisoning: The Death of Charles Francis Hall (1871) 23pulse, and temporary coma.It was not completely consistent with thehigh fever that Bessels had managed to control with quinine injections.WHAT REALLY KILLED HALL?Less than 100 years later, Dartmouth College English professor andArctic scholar Charles (Chauncey) C.Loomis became intrigued withHall s death.While researching Hall s biography, he became troubledby the board of inquiry s conclusion that Hall had died of a stroke.In hisbook Weird and Tragic Shores he explains, My conclusion was, notthat Hall certainly had been murdered, not even that he probably hadbeen murdered, but only that murder was at least possible and plausible. The board of inquiry s hastily reached conclusion about Hall s causeof death was plausible, but the group had ignored other evidence thatwitnesses provided.Loomis wanted to have an autopsy performed tofind out just what killed Charles Francis Hall.Loomis made a request to the Danish Ministry for Greenland toallow Hall s body to be exhumed.He argued that an autopsy wouldhave been ordered for a suspicious death had Hall died in moderntimes.The Danes referred Loomis to Count Eigel Knuth, an archaeolo-gist and Arctic explorer who advised the department about proposedprojects in its northern region.Knuth considered the idea repugnant.Loomis flew to Copenhagen, met with him, and promised to returnthe grave to the same condition in which he found it.Knuth relented.In August 1968, a single-engine Otter floatplane flew over the ice-freewaters of Hall Basin and dropped off Loomis, ex-marine Tom Gignoux,William Barrett, and pathologist Dr.Franklin Paddock.Gignoux dug upthe grave, which was in the permafrost.The American flag covered Hall sface and the upper half of his body.The corpse was well preservedbecause of the cold and dry Arctic air, but it was frozen into the icyground and couldn t be exhumed completely.Paddock bent over thegrave to perform a brief autopsy.He discovered that Hall s intestinesand stomach had dissolved over time.There was also no brain to studyfor signs of the stroke Bessels had claimed.Paddock collected hair andfingernail samples and sent them to the Centre for Forensic Medicine inToronto, Canada.The center reported that Hall had received a lethal quantity of arsenicin the last two weeks of his life.He had not died of a stroke at all hehad been poisoned.His symptoms were typical of arsenic poisoning:arsenic can have a sweet taste and can cause burning stomach pains, 24 Cold Cases: Famous Unsolved Mysteries, Crimes, and Disappearances in Americavomiting, dehydration, intense thirst, feeble pulse, vertigo, stupor, andeven mania.Although several men aboard the Hall expedition had motives towant Hall dead, only Bessels had constant access to him.Therefore, itwas possible for him to administer arsenic mixed in with the quinineinjections or deliver it orally.Hall did improve during the time in whichhe refused to allow Bessels to treat him, but Hall had his own medicinechest.Did he accidentally poison himself in his delirium or did one ofhis crew deliberately kill him? Modern forensic techniques had solveda century-old mystery of what really killed Hall, but by then everyoneinvolved with the expedition was long dead.Whether the poisoningwas deliberate or accidental is a truth that may never be unearthed.FURTHER READINGBerton, Pierre.The Arctic Grail.Toronto: Viking, 1988.Butts, Ed.Unsolved Mysteries.Toronto: Key Porter Books Limited, 2006.Hall, Charles Francis.Life with the Esquimaux.London: Sampson Low, Son,and Marston, 1865 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]