Video: 'Was President Zachary Taylor POISONED?'

(Monday, June 17, 1991) — The remains of Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, were delicately removed today from the crypt in which he was entombed at the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, to prove or disprove rumors he was killed by arsenic poisoning (click here for video of the exhumation beginning at 2:02). 

The remains were transported to the Office of the Kentucky Chief Medical Examiner. Samples of hair, fingernail, and other tissues were removed, and radiological studies were conducted. The remains were returned to the cemetery and reinterred, with appropriate honors, in the mausoleum.

Neutron activation analysis conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory revealed no evidence of poisoning, as arsenic levels were too low. The analysis concluded Taylor had contracted “cholera morbus, or acute gastroenteritis”, as Washington had open sewers, and his food or drink may have been contaminated.

Any potential for recovery was overwhelmed by his doctors, who treated him with “ipecac, calomel, opium, and quinine” at 40 grains per dose (approximately 2.6 grams), and “bled and blistered him too.”

Taylor served was president from 1849 until his death on July 9, 1850. Almost immediately after his death, rumors began to circulate that Taylor was poisoned by pro-slavery Southerners, and similar theories persisted into the 21st century.

In 1978, Hamilton Smith based his assassination theory on the timing of drugs, the lack of confirmed cholera outbreaks, and other material. Then in the late 1980s, Clara Rising, a former professor at the University of Florida, persuaded Taylor’s closest living relative to agree to an exhumation so that his remains could be tested.