Evidence suggests the late king was infected with parasites

Sep 4, 2013 19:11 GMT  ·  By
King Richard III was infected with roundworms at the time of his death, researchers claim
   King Richard III was infected with roundworms at the time of his death, researchers claim

Researchers exploring King Richard III's remains and his grave have recently come across quite a lot of roundworm eggs. The eggs are microscopic in size, and most of them were found in soil samples collected from the late king's pelvis.

Samples collected from Richard III's skull and from inside the grave itself, on the other hand, were found to contain very few roundworm eggs.

Based on the eggs' distribution, researchers concluded that they most likely came from inside the king himself.

More precisely, they now say that, all things considered, King Richard III's guts must have been teeming with roundworms at the time of his death, The Telegraph reports.

Some of these parasites might have been nearly one foot (0.3 meters) long.

As Dr. Piers Mitchell of the University of Cambridge puts it, “Our results show that Richard was infected with roundworms in his intestines, although no other species of intestinal parasite were present in the samples we studied.”

The same source tells us that, around the time of the king's death, cases of roundworm infections in England were by no means few and far in between.

On the contrary, quite a lot of people ended up housing such parasites in their intestines after having consumed contaminated water or food.

Oddly enough, it appears that noblemen were no strangers to such health threats, despite the fact that their living conditions were far better than those of poor people.

“Despite Richard's noble background, it appears that his lifestyle did not completely protect him from intestinal parasite infection, which would have been very common at the time,” Dr. Jo Appleby of the University of Leicester argued.

Most of the people carrying roundworms in their guts did not display any symptoms. Others weren't as lucky, and experienced shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting. Researchers have no way of knowing whether or not King Richard III had at any time displayed any of these symptoms.