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Detecting pathogens in medieval Venice
Medieval Venice was a trading empire, one of the busiest ports of the late medieval world. As a hub of commerce waves of plague visited and revisited Venice in 1348, 1462, 1485, 1506, 1575-1577, and...
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Trench Fever and Plague in 14th Century France
Five Skeletons from Bondy, France. (Source: Tran et al, 2011a) The Marseille plague group has been suggesting for some time now that human lice could be a major vector of medieval plague. To test their...
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Lice, Ancient DNA, and Napoleon’s Grand Army
Identification of human body lice. (Raoult et al, 2006) Life in Napoleon’s Grand Army wasn’t always so grand. The Russian campaign was a disaster, recently most tangibly manifest in the mass grave...
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Trench Fever in German Mass Burial
Trench fever seems to be all the rage these days in paleomicrobiology. It seems as though every time Bartonella quintana is added to a panel of pathogens for aDNA screening its found at some level. So...
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Trench Fever: An Ancient Zoonosis
Rhesus macaque (Photo by J.M. Garg, CC) Trench fever is an ancient disease with a surprisingly short history. Named after its discovery in the trenches of World War I, its case history is only about a...
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Detecting pathogens in medieval Venice
Medieval Venice was a trading empire, one of the busiest ports of the late medieval world. As a hub of commerce waves of plague visited and revisited Venice in 1348, 1462, 1485, 1506, 1575-1577, and...
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The Case for Louse-Transmitted Plague
by Michelle Ziegler The key to understanding plague — past, present, and future — has always been understanding its vector dynamics. By the latest tally, there are 269 known flea species, plus a small...
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