Scientist says Bolivar likely died of poison
A U.S. scientist is supporting a theory that has been widely dismissed as a personal obsession of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez: that his hero Simon Bolivar might have died from arsenic poisoning.
Venezuela's leftist president rejects the traditional account that Bolivar, a brilliant Venezuelan military tactician who liberated much of South America from centuries of Spanish rule, died of tuberculosis in Colombia in 1830.
Now, Paul Auwaerter of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine says his death was most likely caused by arsenic -- either from drinking contaminated water or using the naturally occurring poison to try to cure headaches and hemorrhoids....
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Venezuela's leftist president rejects the traditional account that Bolivar, a brilliant Venezuelan military tactician who liberated much of South America from centuries of Spanish rule, died of tuberculosis in Colombia in 1830.
Now, Paul Auwaerter of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine says his death was most likely caused by arsenic -- either from drinking contaminated water or using the naturally occurring poison to try to cure headaches and hemorrhoids....