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 »
