Xavier Mertz - Legacy

Legacy

In November 1913, a month before the Aurora returned for the final time, Mawson and the six men remaining at Cape Denison erected a memorial cross for Mertz and Ninnis on Azimuth Hill to the north-west of the main hut. The cross, constructed from pieces of a broken radio mast, was accompanied by a plaque cut from wood from Mertz's bunk. The cross still stands, although the crossbar has required reattaching several times, and the plaque was replaced with a replica in 1986. The first glacier the Far Eastern Party crossed on the outward journey—previously unnamed—was named by Mawson after Mertz, becoming the Mertz Glacier. At a speaking engagement upon his return to Australia, Mawson praised his dead comrades: "The survivors might have an opportunity of doing something more, but these men had done their all." At another, Mawson said that "Dr. Mertz was a Swiss by birth, but he was a man every Englishman would have liked to have called an Englishman ... He was a man of great feelings, generous—one of Nature's gentlemen." A telegram was sent on behalf of the Australian people to Emile Mertz, condoling him on his "great loss, but congratulating you on your son's imperishable fame."

The cause of Mertz's death is not certain; at the time, it was believed Mertz may have died of colitis. A 1969 study by Sir John Cleland and R. V. Southcott of the University of Adelaide concluded that the symptoms Mawson described—hair, skin and weight loss, depression, dysentery and persistent skin infections—indicated the men had suffered hypervitaminosis A, an excessive intake of vitamin A. Vitamin A is found in unusually high quantities in the livers of Greenland Dogs, of which both Mertz and Mawson consumed large amounts; indeed, as Mertz's condition deteriorated, Mawson may have given him more of the liver to eat, believing it to be more easily digested. This theory is the most widely accepted, but there have been counter-theories. Phillip Law, former director of Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE), believed cold exposure could account for Mertz's symptoms. A 2005 article in The Medical Journal of Australia by Denise Carrington-Smith, noting that Mertz was essentially a vegetarian, suggested that the sudden change to a predominantly meat diet could have triggered Mertz's illness. Combined with "the psychological stresses related to the death of a close friend and the deaths of the dogs he had cared for, as well as the need to kill and eat his remaining dogs," this may have killed Mertz.