Wanna be a smidge happier? Learn about an extremely rare illness discovered in 1882 by the French neurologist Dr. Jules Cotard — if you can read this post, you almost certainly don’t have it. And for that, you will be gladdened. At his hospital at the Pitié-Salpêtrière University in Paris, the doctor saw a patient […]
Cortard’s Syndrome Read More »
This painting by the Early Modern European artist Pieter Brueghel the Younger shows a line of dancers, but they don’t look like they are having that much fun — for instance, the two women in the center are staring off into space, not paying attention to the musicians in their path. And that’s because they
The Dancing Disease Read More »
As a Medieval historian, one of the things I do is study saints of the Middle Ages — they were akin to our modern-day superheroes, and their special qualities give us a good lens for understanding the values of the distant past. The holy woman featured here today — Rita of Cascia, nee Margherita Ferri
Rita of Cascia, Patroness of Lost Causes Read More »
A new article from the science journal _Nature_ throws another wrench in the mystery about the origins of the greatest pandemic in history, the Black Death. Here you see the Chüy Valley in modern Kyrgyzstan and one of the tombstones involved in the recent study. Dating to 1338, and written in Syriac, the stone’s translation
Would you like some Typhoid with your omelette? The illustration of “Typhoid” Mary Mallon, throwing skulls like eggs into a frying pan, conveys the sentiments about her that many Americans felt in the early 20th century. She looked matronly and healthy, but was responsible for spreading the deadly disease to about 50 people, resulting in
Here you see a modern artist’s rendition of a mythical Malaysian evil tiger spirit called “hantu belian,” which the Malay peoples believed would possess a person’s body and make them commit great violence while they were unconsious. This belief in hantu belian’s destructive powers was pervasive enough that they formed the origin story of the
Hantu Belian and Running Amok Read More »
London’s East Smithfield Cemetery made news this week because of a recent study suggesting that the Medieval Black Death provided impetus for human evolution in a way that shapes many of our genomes today. With the advent of technology that allows for whole genome analysis of the dead, scientists and historians decided to exhume skeletons
The Black Death and Genetics Read More »
Here are four rats rowing a tiny boat, painted in a 14th-century French book. Such an image calls to mind the rats that spread the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis during the worst pandemic in human history: the Black Death. The theory goes that rats carrying the infected fleas spread the bubonic plague that ended up
Syphilis caused widespread suffering in Early Modern Europe – this portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn of a sufferer from about 1665 illustrates the facial deformities that occurred as the disease progressed. Scientists still debate where the disease originated, but one idea is that strains of the bacteria causing syphilis had developed independently Europe and in
Syphilis Outbreak in Europe Read More »
Being a hat maker was a deadly profession of the 19th century, as the life of Boston Corbett (died probably 1894) shows. Corbett is most famous for being the man who shot President Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Less well known is his unfortunate history of mental illness, likely caused or very much exacerbated by
Life of Boston Corbett Read More »
Phytophthora infestans –the micro-organism responsible for potato blight, most horrifically with the Irish Potato Famine of 1845, which depleted the population of Ireland by 30%! (A million people quickly died, and over a million migrated to the U.S.A.) There is some interesting science behind the particular virulence of this outbreak. Scientists figured out that P. Infestans
Phytophthora Infestans and The Irish Potato Famine Read More »
This tooth from the mid-6th century contains DNA from the plague, that same pathogen responsible for the Black Death in 14th- Europe. This version of the bubonic plague is known as the “Justinianic Plague,” named after the Byzantine Emperor who reigned during its outbreak in the capital of Constantinople in 541 CE. Many historians have
Justinianic Plague Read More »
This is a photo from 1943 of a detention hospital for infected women in Leesville, Louisiana. And I’m about to deliver a really sad story about the U.S. government’s treatment of women during the 20th century. This is about a series of laws that came to be known as “The American Plan,” and they resulted
Chamberlain-Kahn Act of 1918 Read More »
