No Stupid Questions

Some other problem with bladder, kidney or prostate.

The first thing that comes to mind here are prostata problems or kidney stones. While the ring muscles can't counter the pressure from a full bladder, the other two can seriously obstruct the urinary tract. In case of a kidney stone, it could even be that sharp crystals support or cause a rupture.

Yeah the urinary bladder doesn't just stop working and burst. There will have been an underlying cause, but it was not picked up at the time so now all we have is a garbled version of how he died.

People can go into acute urinary retention - where they are unable to pass urine. That can be extremely painful and it can lead to rupture if it's totally untreated.

But it doesn't just happen - and choosing not to go to the toilet is not going to cause it. Underlying causes might be prostate enlargement (common), a kidney stone getting trapped in the urethra or bladder neck, or cancers of the prostate, bladder or bowel, amongst others.

In the modern era urinary retention is easily diagnosed with an ultrasound and usually a CT to assess for causes. Urinary catheterisation can be performed either through the urethra or a suprapubic catheter through the skin to bypass the blockage.

None of that was available when he was alive - he'd just have been in extreme agony and there was little anyone would know to do. When he died they might have done an autopsy and found the burst bladder but workinf out what happened would be difficult and depend on the skill and knowledge of the person who did the autopsy.

So it's extremely unlikely he died because he didn't go to the toilet during a banquet. Something else happened that precipitated his urinary retention and eventual bladder perforation.

Once the bladder perforated he was a dead man as there was nothing they could do to repair the bladder or clean out the abdomen in that period. He'd have rapidly become more ill and died from infection and organ failure.

I mean, a burst bladder is the currently-accepted cause of death. There were some suspicions that he was poisoned, but I believe they examined his remains multiple times and concluded that the burst bladder is the most likely explanation.

Now, whether that's because he intentionally held it or had some other preexisting condition that caused his bladder to burst, may still be up for debate. But I'd have to imagine that if there were signs of any other causes, it would have been found in one of the exams they did. But the lack of any other medical evidence, combined with first-hand testimony, kinda only points to one reasonable explanation, which is that the story is true and his situation was a medical outlier.

At first I thought this was about Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade and was genuinely confused for a minute…

Bodily functions that should be automatic fail all the time, for bullshit reasons, why not that one? Not that I have any strong feelings about that story but I don't think it's entirely outrageous to imagine. I'm aware that I may lack vital information about human anatomy - but so do the people you're talking about.

He was built different /s

Just because it's generally possible for the bladder to rupture before the muscles give out, it's certainly not impossible. A myriad of conditions or even just genetics can lead to a physically weaker bladder.

I think it's a bit bold to say that absolutely 100%, no exceptions, that the muscles will always fail first. Even if that's true 99.99% of the time, there's just far to much variance in human bodies to rule it out, I would think.

I don't know the particulars of this specific person, but you can absolutely have your bladder rupture. Conditions like neurogenic bladder can cause routine over expansion of the bladder, weakening its walls, and eventually it can tear.

people are dumb, and they like stupid stories.

Well, not with THAT attitude.