So in the article about the Mllard Fillmore Society, Cecil makes this casual statement.
“But sadly, Taylor died in office after eating too many strawberries on a warm day.”
Ummm…what? Is there a fatal illness caused by eating too many strawberries on a warm day? Did I miss something?
prior to refrigeration, food poisoning generally was more prevalent. fruits and vegetables can be susceptible to carrying germs, since they are usually kept moist. that’s the reason for cautions to tourists about eating fresh fruit and vegetables in countries without good sanitation and refrigeration.
I always heard that he ate cherries with ice cold milk and pickles. The official cause of death was gastroenteritis, but it is possible that the doctors of the time killed him with primitive treatments.
There were theories of poisoning, but these were largely laid to rest when his body was reexamined a few years ago.
The fatal meal was consumed on a very hot July 4th, after Taylor sat through a lot of 19th century oratory in Washington humidity, sweating in a wool suit.
I’d heard this old myth told as he died from eating cherries.
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Moved to Comments on Cecil’s Columns.
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Wikipedia, too, notes that the offending fruit was cherries. Obviously, Little Ed made a mistake (again).
Samuel Eliot Morrison, in The Oxford History of the American People, vol. 2 says Taylor:
OTOH, David C. Whitney, in The American Presidents, says merely that he became ill from the heat.
Tony Seybert writes a debunking piece that says:
He says that none of the food claims rely on primary sources and that Taylor may have died of arsenic poisoning. He relies heavily, perhaps totally, on History as Mystery by Michael Parenti, who apparently has no real evidence to share either.
I don’t have a biography of Taylor and I don’t know what the latest scholarship says. It may be that nobody really knows.
In a hazardous materials class, our instructor was making a point about finding hazards where we don’t expect them. Strawberries, he said, are acidic enough to be in the “corrosive” range. Wine is close, but not quite. He said if you ate a quart of strawberries, you could well end up in the hospital. :eek:
It was a mighty bold statement, I thought. :dubious:
Cyril Wecht, the forensic pathologist that did the modern autopsy said the family story was cherries and cold milk. He checked for signs of poisoning, another long lasting rumor and put it to rest. The cause of death was officially recorded as undetermined.
ah. but the strawberry’s, that’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with geometric logic that a duplicate key did exist.
Parenti’s debunking says that the testing for arsenic was fatally flawed. Whether that’s true or not I can’t say.
Cold milk? He died from brain freeze. 
I wonder in what class your instructor would place stomach acid…
In this 1994 Column, Cecil recants his wild claim of it having been strawberries with no explanation, and defers to the more popular opinion that it was cherries (and apples and milk). Then he goes on to say nobody knows for sure how he died. But contaminated fruit and/or medical malpractice could likely have played a role. So, now that we have that all cleared up, time for some day old egg salad with cherries.