About Alexander’s death – again!

With regular intervals, a new theory about the conqueror’s cause of death is thrown into the news. It is very hard to keep track, more so since every professor, physician, archaeologist, scientist, or dilettante is claiming that he is right.

The latest news on that front comes from a Professors of Medicine emeritus at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Dr. Thomas Gerasimidis. With such a name of great reputation, the reader is inclined to take his story seriously. This professor, who claims to have studied the cause of Alexander’s death for the past twenty-five years, is convinced that the king died of pancreatic necrosis. He does not explain how – if at all – such a condition would lead to Alexander’s losing his voice.

Only some of the previous causes of death have made it to my blog as I left out the most absurd ones. But for those who want to dig in a little further, I will refer to my post from January 2014, New theory about Alexander’s death, which talks about the white false hellebore plant as the culprit. In November 2017, I made a very tentative overview of the many theories in About the death of Alexander the Great. None of them was conclusive thought. And, more recently, in January 2019, I aired the theory Did Alexander the Great die from an infection, which is not convincing either.

This latest article from Dr. Thomas Gerasimidis was published in The Greek Reporter last October.