Abstract

The book is a translation of my "Der rätselhafte Tod des René Descartes" (2009). It contains a rather complete collection of the documents on the fatal illness and the death of Descartes. It claims that the medical documents make a poisoning by arsenic very probable. The suspected murderer is the French monk Francois Viogué. His motive: Descartes was seen as a probable hindrance to the conversion of the Swedish queen Christina.