The troubled English king Richard III suffered from roundworm infestation as well as spinal problems, researchers have revealed.
The king’s body was found under a car park in Leicester last year.
Archaeologists have since chronicled the horrific injuries he suffered as he was hacked down a the Battle of Bosworth, which ushered in the Tudor reign of England.
Shakespeare famously quoted the king pleading for a horse to save him – while history has vilified him for the disappearance of his young nephews in the Tower of London.
Now Dr Piers Mitchell of Cambridge University, UK, and colleagues at Leicester University, where the body was found in 2012, report the latest analysis of the remains. King Richard III ruled England from 1483 to 1485, when roundworm infection was rife.
The team looked at soil samples from the skeleton’s pelvis and skull, using a strong microscope. This showed several roundworm eggs around the pelvis, close to the intestines, where the parasites would have lived.
No eggs were seen in the skull or soil surrounding the body, which suggests this was a true infection rather than contamination of the grave.
Reporting in The Lancet, the researchers explain that roundworms infect humans by ingestion of their eggs through food, water, or soil. Inside the body, the eggs hatch and the larvae head for the lungs. After maturating in the lungs, they crawl up to the throat, are swallowed back into the intestines, and grow to about a foot long. Infection is rare these days.
"Our results show that Richard was infected with roundworms in his intestines, although no other species of intestinal parasite were present in the samples we studied," said Dr Mitchell.
"We would expect nobles of this period to have eaten meats such as beef, pork and fish regularly, but there was no evidence for the eggs of the beef, pork or fish tapeworm. This may suggest that his food was cooked thoroughly, which would have prevented the transmission of these parasites."
Commenting on the discovery, researcher Dr Jo Appleby said: "Despite Richard’s noble background, it appears that his lifestyle did not completely protect him from intestinal parasite infection, which would have been very common at the time."
Mitchell, P. D. et al. The intestinal parasites of King Richard III. The Lancet 4 September 2013 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61757-2 [abstract]
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