Death of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov for a long time was considered not a mystery - a great writer died at the age of 44 from tuberculosis, which suffered most of his life. However, recent studies of scientists from the UK shed light on the details of the demise of the prose writer. After examining the blood stains that appeared on his shirt in the last hours of his life, the experts came to an unexpected conclusion.
Death overtook the writer in Germany, in the resort of Badenweiler, where he went in the hope of curing weak lungs. In the fateful night on July 2, 1904, as the wife of prose writer Olga Leonardovna later recalled, Chekhov asked: "I have not drunk champagne for a long time!" - then spoke in German (almost did not know the language): "Ich sterbe" ("I'm dying") - and drained the glass. He smiled, lay down on his left side and soon died.
On the night of death Chekhov coughed blood. The stain on the shirt was examined by scientists of the British Institute of Biological Sciences in Norwich. Samples were also taken from the playwright's manuscripts, writes the British press.
The chemical composition of the samples showed that, in addition to proteins indicative of the presence of microbacteria of tuberculosis, there are also proteins in the samples that contributed to the formation of a thrombus. He, according to the researchers, and led to a blockage of blood vessels and subsequent hemorrhage to the brain.
It was the hemorrhage that scientists considered the immediate cause of the writer's death. Tuberculosis, which weakened the body for decades, did not become fatal for the writer.
Anton Pavlovich was buried in the Moscow Novodevichy Cemetery, next to his father. In 1933, after the abolition of the cemetery on the territory of the monastery, at the request of the writer's wife, a reburial was carried out behind the southern wall of the monastery. Chekhov's coffin was transferred to a new grave, along with a gravestone and a gravestone from the grave of his father, Pavel Yegorovich.
