75 years of science and technology
Conspiracy theories are nothing new. When President Zachary Taylor took sick and died 16 months into his presidency in 1850, he had been a relatively healthy war hero. A fatal gastric malady struck after he consumed fruit and iced milk at a July 4th celebration.
Slavery was the issue of the day, and Taylor was a unionist, so some suspected he might have been poisoned by pro-slavery conspirators. In 1991, Taylor’s descendants agreed to have Old Rough and Ready’s body exhumed for chemical analysis.
Hair and nail samples were sent to ORNL, where researchers Frank Dyer and Larry Robinson of what was then the Analytical Chemistry Division subjected them to neutron irradiation in the High Flux Isotope Reactor.
Dyer had previous experience with investigations of presidential deaths. He was part of an ORNL team that analyzed bullet samples from the Kennedy assassination and confirmed they came from the same gun.
All human bodies have traces of arsenic, so the amount of arsenic in Taylor’s remains was key. Robinson, who went on to become president of Florida A&M University, and Dyer sent their results to a medical examiner in Kentucky, who determined that Taylor’s arsenic levels were hundreds of times lower than what would have been necessary to kill him.
Whatever killed Taylor—most likely dysentery or cholera, which was in an outbreak at the time—neutron science ruled out arsenic poisoning for all but the most steadfast conspiracy theorists.
