Thomas Gerald Wheeler

The author states in the beginning that it is his intention to not only convince his readers, but to prove to them that the body that occupies the sarcophagus at Les Invalides, is not that of the great Napoleon. Evidently, this author had too much imagination & not enough proof to back up his claim.
This book can be summed up in the last words of the last chapter: fantasy. The author has taken small, insignificant details from mundane conversations of the residents of Saint Helena & made them the basis of the whole preposterous theory. He contradicts himself several times, especially when referring to Montholon.
When referring to the memoirs in the second chapter, the author states his opinion that Montholon’s memoirs to be the most reliable, going so far as to believe the Count’s claims that Napoleon had wrestled him to the floor just a little while before his death! Wheeler later states that Montholon had a tendency to be “imaginative” (a tendency he seemed to have had in common with Wheeler) in his memoirs, but then goes on to say that Montholon was not a “base or desperate man”.
Then, Wheeler has the audacity to dismiss Forshuvud’s theory of arsenic poisoning due to lack of scientific evidence, claiming that the hair samples tested could have come from anyone, & disregarding the acceptable levels of arsenic for that time period. If he had read any of Forshuvud’s or Weider’s works, he might have realized that every aspect of the arsenic theory had scientific & historical evidence behind it rather than speculation, such as his own work had been.… (altro)