Did toxic wine kill alexander the Great?

Alexander the Great died in 323 BC at the age of 32

Alexander the Great built a legendary empire before his untimely - and mysterious - death at the age of just 32 in 323 BC. Some historians argued was death was due to natural causes, while others maintained he was secretly murdered at a celebratory banquet.

Now, an Otago University scientist may have unraveled the case some 2000 years later.

National Poisons Centre toxicologist Dr Leo Schep thinks the culprit could be poisonous wine made from an innocuous-looking plant, according to a report in the New Zealand Herald.

Dr Schep, who has been researching the toxicological evidence for a decade, said some of the poisoning theories - including arsenic and strychnine - were not plausible.

Death would have come far too fast, he said. His research, coauthored by Otago University classics expert Dr Pat Wheatley and published in the medical journal Clinical Toxicology, found the most plausible culprit was Veratrum album, known as white hellebore. The white-flowered plant, which can be fermented into a poisonous wine, was well-known to the Greeks as a herbal treatment for inducing vomiting.

Crucially, it could have accounted for the 12 torturous days that Alexander took to die, speechless and unable to walk.

Other suggested poisons - including hemlock, aconite, wormwood, henbane and autumn crocus - would likely have killed him far more quickly.

Dr Schep began looking into the mystery in 2003 when he was approached by a company working on a BBC documentary.

… it could have accounted for the 12 torturous days that Alexander took to die, speechless and unable to walk

New findings, which were ten years in the making, suggest that Alexander the Great died from drinking wine that was tainted with a seemingly innocuous plant called hellebore

Dr Leo Schep, toxicologist at the National Poisons Centre and scientist at the Otago University in New Zealand, thinks a poisonous wine made from a plant may have killed Alexander the Great

Pretty but deadly: Veratrum album, known as white hellebore, is a plant that, once fermented properly, can be lethal