"As the worms migrate through the body, they can cause a cough and an unpleasant feeling as the worm is swallowed," Mitchell said. He said the king's doctors wouldn't have linked those symptoms to the worms and probably would have prescribed treatments including bloodletting. Mitchell doubted the worms would have worsened Richard III's spinal deformity; William Shakespeare's play depicts him as a hunchback regent who had his two young nephews murdered so he could claim the English throne.