Reuters, AP

May 30, 2014

WASHINGTON – William Shakespeare excoriated Richard III, the last king of England to die in battle, more than 500 years ago, with vibrant verbiage: a “foul bunch-back’d toad,” “deformed, unfinish’d” and a hunchback so ugly that dogs barked as he passed by.

But the bard seems to have missed the mark, scientists said Thursday.

Their comprehensive analysis of the king’s remains, including a 3-D reconstruction of his spine, confirmed that Richard was not really a hunchback but instead suffered from scoliosis, a sideways curvature of the spine.

Scientists spotted the spinal abnormality that looked like scoliosis when Richard’s skeleton — replete with a cleaved skull — was dug up in the English city of Leicester in 2012, in one of the most important archaeological finds in recent English history.

Researchers who created a plastic 3-D model of the slain king’s spine based on scans of the bones provided the first complete account of Richard’s condition in a study published in the Lancet medical journal. […continued]

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