1 - ANTOMMARCHI, François (1789–1838), Napoleon’s physician on Saint Helena.

ANTOMMARCHI, François (1789–1838), Napoleon’s physician on Saint Helena. L.A.S. “From Fo Antommarchi,” Longwood, December 22, 1819, to Hudson LOWE; 3½ pages, in-4; in Italian. Protest against the surveillance imposed on him by Hudson Lowe. Note: Antommarchi breaks a long silence to complain about the surveillance and harassment he endures on a daily basis. Yesterday, a sentry prevented him from returning home for half an hour. The same misfortune had befallen him the previous Sunday; this brings the total number of such detentions to three in three months; he wonders about the reasons for this situation, given that, until now, the island’s governor had been benevolent. He complains of being forced to live in seclusion at Longwood: “Being forced to remain confined at Longwood without being a friar or a monk by choice presents me with a most arduous and difficult undertaking to endure.” He cannot see anyone; and these arrests cast suspicion on him in the eyes of the island’s other inhabitants and his fellow priests… He points out that he came to Saint Helena to treat Emperor Napoleon, who was suffering from chronic hepatitis, exacerbated by the island’s climate: “If the reason for my coming is the mercurial treatment, which has been administered with some success for the chronic, endemic, and generally incurable hepatitis from which Emperor Napoleon has long suffered in this unpredictable and dangerous climate”… He was tempted to request permission to return home (“il permesso di rimpatriare”). Finally, due to the heat wave, he needed to go out at the end of the day; he therefore asks that he be allowed to go out into the open air as he pleases… Enclosed is another autograph letter to Dr. Archibald ARNOTT, Longwood, March 6, 1821 (two months before Napoleon’s death), requesting a list of medications (1 p., in-8, address).