King Charles VIII of France's Death: From an Unsubstantiated Traumatic Brain Injury to More Realistic Hypotheses.

Abstract On April 7th, 1498, Charles VIII, King of France, attended a game of palm in the ditches of the Château d'Amboise. The 27-year-old King suddenly collapsed and became comatose. He laid down, almost on his own, on a straw mat that was hastily arranged and passed away 9 hours later. His contemporaries perceived his death as a perfect reminder of fatality: a King could die alone in a miserable gallery. All who looked into this curious death dwelled on the frontal blow to head that the king had undergone right before his demise and have not considered alternative scenarios. This study, still with limited available evidence, aims at re-examining the historical account of his death in light of modern medical knowledge. It is virtually impossible that a minor bump with low kinetic energy could kill a 27-year-old man. Many historical accounts on Charles VIII’s life and death, including Italian ambassadors’ letters, led us to reconsider the commonly held version and drove us to propose an alternative hypothesis. We conclude that Charles VIII suffered from an acute consciousness disorder with language impairment that could be related to an epileptic condition secondary to neurosyphilis. We discuss whether a more accurate diagnosis for cause of death could be obtained on the basis of the pathological analysis of the King’s remains.