Royal Autopsy

Professor Alice Roberts explores possible reasons for the death of King Charles II, the King known for his love of fine dining, theatre, and women, who died in February 1685, aged 54.

She reveals that superstition lay at the heart of 17th-century medicine and instead of helping to cure their King's convulsions and discomfort, his doctors may well have hastened his painful death, with their slavish devotion to purging the body of toxins using a variety of outlandish emetics and enemas.

Did King Charles die of natural causes, did he inadvertently poison himself with his penchant for mercury experimentation, or was it his own doctors' violations that killed him?

Professor Alice Roberts explores the circumstances surrounding the death of the so-called Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII, in March 1603, aged 69. Upon examination of an exact replica of her body, Home Office Pathologist Dr. Brett Lockyer observes signs of possible scrofula infections in her mouth, as well as rotting teeth and dilapidated internal organs.

The Queen had striven desperately for life but was let down by her mind and body. Was the wound where her coronation ring had to be cut from her hand the possible source of her final infection, hastened by the severe melancholia and mania which overwhelmed her during her final days?