Israeli Researcher Solves 340-Year-Old Mystery of Swedish Queen's Death

An Israeli researcher, Professor Zeid Abassi from the Technion's Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, along with international colleagues, has proposed a new theory regarding the cause of death of Queen Christina of Sweden, who died in 1689 at the age of 62. For nearly 340 years, the exact cause of her demise remained a mystery. The researchers suggest that the queen likely suffered from undiagnosed diabetes, which led to a chronic leg wound and a fatal bacterial infection, ultimately causing sepsis.

Christina's life was marked by extraordinary events. She ascended the throne at age six, abdicated her throne in 1654, converted to Catholicism, and eventually was buried in the Vatican. Her unconventional upbringing, educated as a boy, and her later life fueled speculation about her gender and sexuality, which the researchers note was often based on incomplete information and limited medical understanding of the time.

Historical documents, including a post-mortem report discovered in a private archive in Vienna, were analyzed alongside recorded symptoms from Christina's life. The report, though delayed and partially degraded by autolysis, described a recurring, non-healing reddish lesion on her right leg, diagnosed at the time as erysipelas. Modern understanding reveals this bacterial infection could have spread, leading to sepsis.

Professor Abassi explained that Christina exhibited symptoms consistent with diabetes, such as extreme thirst and increased urination, even in her 40s, and more severely in the months before her death. However, diabetes was not a recognized diagnosis in the 17th century. The researchers connected these symptoms to the chronic leg wound and infection, concluding that undiagnosed diabetes complicated by a bacterial infection and sepsis was the most probable cause of her death.

The research, which began as a casual conversation between Professor Abassi and Professor Rolf Barth at Ohio State University, spanned continents and delved into centuries-old records. While acknowledging the inherent challenges of diagnosing historical figures due to incomplete data, the team believes their findings shed new light on the queen's final illness, complementing earlier theories that pointed to infection. A 1965 examination of Christina's remains had confirmed her skeleton was female and revealed scoliosis, but did not clarify her cause of death.