Mercury Poisoning Ruled Out as Cause of Tycho Brahe's Death

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Mercury poisoning ruled out as cause of Tycho Brahe's death
Anja Kjærgaard
Aarhus University
November 14, 2012

In 2010, Tycho Brahe was exhumed from his grave in Prague, an event
which received extensive international media coverage. Since then, a
Danish-Czech team of researchers has been working to elucidate the cause
of Tycho Brahe's death. The results of this intensive work now make it
possible to rule out mercury poisoning as a cause of death.

For over four hundred years, Tycho Brahe's untimely death has been a
mystery. He died on 24 October 1601 only eleven days after the onset of
a sudden illness. Over the centuries, a variety of myths and theories
about his death have arisen.

One of the most persistent theories has been that he died of mercury
poisoning, either because he voluntarily ingested large quantities of
mercury for medicinal purposes, or because mercury was used to poison him.

Rumours of death by poisoning arose shortly after Tycho Brahe's death.
Brahe's famous assistant Johannes Kepler has been identified as a
possible murder suspect, and other candidates have been singled out for
suspicion throughout the years, according to Dr Jens Vellev, an
archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark who is heading the
research project.

The mercury poisoning theory has received apparent corroboration from
repeated tests of the well-preserved remains of Tycho Brahe's beard
which were removed from the grave when his body was exhumed for the
first time in 1901.

'To definitively prove or disprove these much debated theories, we took
samples from Tycho Brahe's beard, bones and teeth when we exhumed his
remains in 2010. While our analyses of his teeth are not yet complete,
the scientific analyses of Tycho Brahe's bones and beard are,' explains
Dr Vellev.

Normal concentrations of mercury

The levels of mercury in Tycho Brahe's beard were investigated by Dr
Kaare Lund Rasmussen, associate professor of chemistry at the University
of Southern Denmark and Dr Jan KuÄ era, professor of nuclear chemistry at
the Nuclear Physics Institute in Prague.

"We measured the concentration of mercury using three different
quantitative chemical methods in our labs in Odense and Řež, and all
tests revealed the same result: that mercury concentrations were not
sufficiently high to have caused his death,' says Dr Rasmussen.

'In fact, chemical analyses of the bones indicate that Tycho Brahe was
not exposed to an abnormally high mercury load in the last five to ten
years of his life,' continues Dr Rasmussen, who analysed the bone
samples using cold vapour atomic absorption spectroscopy at the
University of Southern Denmark.

'Analyses of hairs from the beard were performed using radiochemical
neutron activation analysis and proton microprobe scanning in Řež. They
reflect the mercury load in the last approximately eight weeks of Tycho
Brahe's life, and these analyses show that mercury concentrations fell
from the high end of the normal level eight weeks before death to the
low end of the normal level in the last two weeks before death,'
explains Dr KuÄ era.

The "silver nose" that wasn't

In addition to his beard, another central element of the Tycho Brahe
myth has been subjected to quantitative analysis: his famous artificial
nose. Tycho Brahe lost part of his nose in a duel in 1566. According to
tradition, the prosthetic nose he wore for the rest of his life was made
of silver and gold.

When Tycho Brahe's grave was opened for the first time in 1901, his nose
prosthesis was not found, but there were greenish stains around the
nasal region - traces left by the prosthesis.

'When we exhumed the body in 2010, we took a small bone sample from the
nose so that we could examine its chemical composition. Surprisingly,
our analyses revealed that the prosthesis was not made of precious
metals, as was previously supposed. The green colouration turned out to
contain traces of equal parts copper and zinc, which indicates that the
prosthesis was made of brass. So Tycho Brahe's famous "silver nose"
wasn't made of silver after all,' explains Dr Vellev.

The reconstruction of Tycho Brahe's face

Researchers also took advantage of the opportunity to perform a CT-
scanning Tycho Brahe's skeleton while they had access to his remains in
2010. The researcher team hopes to be able to reconstruct Tycho Brahe's
face on the basis of the scanning and their analyses.

Upcoming TV programme on the death of Tycho Brahe

A team of film-makers from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) has
followed the entire project closely, from Jens Vellev's fight to win
permission for the exhumation from the authorities in Prague to the
analysis of Tycho Brahe's remains and the publication of research results.

The documentary *Mysteriet om Tycho Brahes died* (The Mysterious Death of
Tycho Brahe) will be broadcast by DR on Sunday 18 November 7 pm.

The film is a DR production in collaboration with Swedish and Czech
television with support from Nordvision. American and German TV channels
have already expressed interest in the documentary.