Researchers find arsenic in King George's hair

The well-known madness of King George III, who ruled England during the American Revolution, was probably exacerbated by arsenic-contaminated medicines used to treat some of his symptoms, according to a study of his hair in today's issue of the journal Lancet.

In 1966, researchers proposed that George III suffered from a genetic disorder called variegate porphyria, an overproduction of the reddish pigments in hemoglobin, which carry oxygen in red blood cells. George displayed many symptoms of porphyria, including abdominal pain, reddish urine and mental disturbance. Similar symptoms have been reported across several generations of the royal lineage.

Arsenic disrupts hemoglobin production, but that disruption paradoxically triggers many of the symptoms of the disorder.

Biochemist Martin Warren of the University of Kent and his colleagues studied five strands of George's hair preserved at London's Science Museum. They concluded that the hair had an arsenic content of 17 parts per million — 17 times the level generally considered to indicate arsenic poisoning.

"It is extremely likely that his bouts of madness were due to severe porphyric attacks," Warren said. "Arsenic may have precipitated his attacks, or made them much more severe."

King George's nearly 60-year rule began in 1760. During his reign, he experienced at least five, weeks-long bouts of extreme derangement. He occasionally became violent, and he often talked to imaginary people, including a tree he thought was the Prussian king, Frederick the Great.

To relieve stomach pain, George was given emetic tartar to induce vomiting. This primitive medicine contained the flaky, blue-silver metal antimony, which was commonly contaminated with up to 5 percent arsenic.

Many other causes of this madness had been proposed, including "sexual frustration that [he] had been forced to marry the first available, and most ugly, of the available German Protestant princesses," Warren said.