Doctors heal us, and unless they’re outright sociopaths, they strive to keep us alive. Yet, when the body is at its weakest, a medical intervention can sometimes become the very thing that ends a life. Here are 10 famous people whose doctors, intentionally or not, played a fatal role.
10 Famous People Who Died Because of Their Doctors
10 King George V
Kings usually enjoy the very best of everything—lavish meals, grand castles, and top‑tier medical care. That royal advantage often translates into longer lifespans than the common folk they rule.
King George V of the United Kingdom met an untimely end because of his very status. He was already on the brink of death, but the timing didn’t suit the morning newspaper cycle. When he slipped into a coma, his passing threatened to be reported in the evening editions. To ensure the prestigious morning papers broke the story first, his physician, Lord Dawson, administered a lethal cocktail of cocaine and morphine to accelerate the king’s demise.
9 President Garfield
Being the President of the United States certainly takes a toll on one’s health—the before‑and‑after photos of presidents show how it ages them. Even worse is the ever‑present risk of assassination.
President James A. Garfield was shot in 1881 by Charles Guiteau. The bullet lodged behind his pancreas, but it was not the fatal blow. The real killer was the infection introduced by his own doctors.
Immediately after the shooting, physicians probed the wound with their bare fingers, introducing germs that sparked a fever. They repeatedly searched for the bullet without ever sterilizing their hands or tools; one even punctured the president’s liver with a finger. Eighty days later, Garfield succumbed to the infection.
8 Sigmund Freud
Not every famous person who dies at the hands of a physician is a victim of negligence or malice. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, famously quipped, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” yet his own habit led to oral cancer.
Freud smoked up to twenty cigars a day, which eventually gave him painful cancers of the mouth. As his final days approached, he told his doctor he wanted a painless exit. At his request, the doctor administered morphine injections, easing Freud’s passage.
7 President Washington
Of all medical terrors that may confront us, a sore throat is probably not the first that comes to mind.
George Washington rode out in the snow, dined without changing out of his damp clothes, and the next day reported a sore throat. When an infection swelled his throat, his physician applied the era’s preferred treatment: bloodletting. When that failed, a second doctor blistered his throat to draw out fluids. He was bled again, given an enema, forced to vomit, and subjected to a cascade of other harsh remedies, all of which weakened him and let the infection run rampant.
Thanks to his doctors’ tender ministrations, Washington’s last words were reportedly, “Doctor, I die hard.”
6 Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson was gearing up for a new world tour when he suddenly died in 2009. The cause was a powerful anesthetic known as propofol.
Propofol is commonly used for general anesthesia. Jackson’s doctor employed it to treat the singer’s insomnia, a side effect of tour‑related stress. Using propofol to coax sleep is like using an atomic bomb to dig a garden bed—effective, but the collateral damage is catastrophic.
The physician was sentenced to four years for involuntary manslaughter but served only two before release.
5 Joan Rivers
Comedienne Joan Rivers never shied away from talking about her cosmetic surgery, even joking, “I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I’d look like without plastic surgery.” In 2014, she entered the hospital for a routine operation, but complications arose, and she died.
Many assumed a classic case of “living by the scalpel, dying by the scalpel.” In reality, Rivers perished after a botched examination of her throat—nothing to do with her love of plastic surgery.
In 2016, her doctors settled a malpractice suit and accepted responsibility for her death.
4 Abraham Lincoln
Everyone knows President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while attending a theater; John Wilkes Booth shot him point‑blank in the head. That wound seems clearly fatal—case closed?
Not quite. During the Civil War, many survived brain injuries, suggesting that the bullet alone might not have been the sole cause of death. The medical treatment that followed could have sealed his fate.
Doctor Charles Leale, the first to reach the president, reported, “The coagula I easily removed and passed the little finger of my left hand through the perfectly smooth opening made by the ball.” While the bullet caused massive damage, subsequent probing by other doctors may have led to deadly blood loss.
3 King Charles II
Position and power do not guarantee flawless medical care. King Charles II of England suffered an overabundance of physicians—fourteen doctors tended to him in his final days, each eager to try their own remedy.
When the monarch experienced a fit while shaving, the doctors launched a barrage of treatments: bloodletting, blistering, another round of bloodletting, an emetic, a second blistering after head shaving, an enema, and even plasters made from pigeon droppings. That was merely the first day.
Over the subsequent days, they drew ever more blood and tried stranger cures. The Merry Monarch died in pain but managed a courteous apology to his visitors: “You must pardon me, gentlemen, for being a most unconscionable time a‑dying.”
2 Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon’s masterpiece, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is a staple of historical literature. Yet, a lesser‑known fact about the historian is his battle with a painful swelling of the testicles.
Modern skinny jeans might cause discomfort, but they’re nothing compared to the tight breeches of the 18th century. Gibbon could not hide his condition and decided to have it surgically addressed. He told his surgeon, “If the business goes off smoothly, I shall be delivered of a small burden (it is almost as big as a small child).”
Four quarts of watery fluid were drained in the first operation, a procedure repeated several times, each yielding similar amounts. While these interventions relieved the agony, they also introduced an infection that ultimately claimed his life.
1 Charles II Of Navarre
The second Charles II on this list suffered a gruesome demise, even by the standards of a man nicknamed Charles the Bad—a moniker earned by his opportunistic political juggling during the Hundred Years’ War.
When he fell ill, unable to move his arms or legs, his physicians prescribed an unconventional cure: wrapping him in brandy‑soaked cloth. To maximize exposure, the monarch was sewn into the soaked linens each night.
One night, the seamstress had a stray thread left over. Instead of cutting it, she burned it off with a candle. The flame ignited the alcohol‑laden bedding, setting the king ablaze. According to chronicler Jean Froissart, Charles lingered in agony for two weeks before dying, providing moralists a fittingly tragic end.