Session 264 (Friday 1:30)
Schneider 1255

Health and Healing in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland
Presider: Deanna Forsman, North Hennepin Community College

• Famine and Pestilence in the Irish Sea Region, 500–800 AD: Michelle Ziegler
• Regional Patterns of Health in Early Medieval Ireland: Distributions of Non-specific Stress Indicators: Mara Tesorieri, Univ. College Cork
• The Experience and Practice of Medicine by the Laity in Anglo-Saxon England: Julia Bolotina, Univ. of Cambridge
• By Rome, or By Spain? Possible Mediterranean Origins of Irish Holy Well Veneration: Silas J. Mallery, North Hennepin Community College

Session 319 (Friday 3:30)
Schneider 1255

Medical Texts of the Early Medieval Mediterranean
Presider: Michelle Ziegler

• Animal-Derived Medicines in Early Medieval Pharmacy: Jayna Brett, Centre for Medieval Studies, Univ. of Toronto
• A Medieval Hippocrates? The construction of the Articella during the eleventh century.: Marco A. Viniegra, Harvard Univ.
• Book-Learning and Medicine in Medieval Byzantium: Theory and Practice in the Alexiad of Anna Comnena: Glen M. Cooper, Brigham Young Univ.

Starting with Lindsey’s latest post, let’s get this round-up rolling. The Chirurgenon’s Apprentice started the new year with a post on Cold Like the Dead: Learning Dispassion through Dissection.

Marri Lynn of Wonders and Marvels writes about the many medicinal uses Nicolas of Poland found for snakes.  Elizabeth Fix also of Wonders & Marvels writes about the search for immortality and the Philosopher’s Stone. Adrienne Mayor of Wonders & Marvels tells us that the quest for stem-cell like rejuvenation is ancient indeed!

Eric Michael Johnson of Primate Diaries discusses uses of the past by scientists and science writers.

Caroline Rance of The Quack Doctor reviews Moore’s Shropshire Doctors and Quacks.

Here at Contagions, I looked at a study of malaria in 18th century Finland and the process of retrospective diagnosis today.

Katy Meyers of Bones Don’t Lie looks at malaria trends in the UK and the discovery of brucellosis in medieval Albanian remains.

Kristina Killgrove of Powered by Osteons takes on a recent paper on the plague of Athens in the play Oedipus Rex, shares some material on ethics in bioarchaeology (part 1: Americas), and skeletal evidence of lead poisoning in ancient to medieval Rome.

Maryn McKenna of Superbug has been on the trail of completely resistant TB in India and in Italy.

On the other hand, Vincent Racaniello of The Virology Blog celebrates India’s polio free anniversary, and reassessed the mortality rate of ebolavirus, and discusses the recent moratorium on influenza H5N1 transmission research.

Zoonotica writes about the importance of bovine TB that is causing the planned cull of badgers in Britain.

Tara Smith of Aetiology writes about some of her recent research on MRSA in pork products.

Jennifer Frazer of The Artful Amoeba writes a scary finding on the durability of noravirus (Norwalk virus).

Michael Walsh of Infection Landscapes writes on our ancient passengers the Helminths (worms).

Small Things Considered took a look at what’s so scary about restroom microbiota.

Black Death at Tourinai, 1349

The way we make and think about retrospective diagnosis is changing. Over the last decade, laboratory results have become the preferred (maybe even mandatory) method of making a retrospective diagnosis [1]. To extrapolate a few positive laboratory results to cover an entire epidemic, it must correlate with reported signs and symptoms and ideally epidemiology. There are pitfalls at every step of the process.

Today, laboratory results focus on identifying species specific biomolecules, aDNA and non-DNA molecules such as specific capsule lipids. I previously posted more detail on the non-DNA biomolecules used in paleomicrobiology. Each of these methods has its critics and proponents. Laboratory results should always be logical with the osteological analysis of the skeletal remains and with at least the majority of the written record. We have to remember that just because an infection was detected, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they died from it. If a skull has a sword wounds, it is unlikely that they died from tuberculosis. There is a significant difference between dying with a disease and dying from it.

For these science reports to be helpful to historians and anthropologists, they need to provide better context on the skeletal remains including how the remains were dated and associated with a particular epidemic. To give one example, a recent letter to Emerging Infectious Diseases reports Yersinia pestis in unerupted teeth from tombs under Sant’ Andrea church in Barletta, Italy [4]. They suggest this identifies the 1656-1657 epidemic as the plague. Although the tombs were said to have been used “since the 14th century” and have been hypothesized to have been used for the 1656-1657 epidemic, they do not give any indication how these five youths were selected for study. They report that their negative control from the same tomb complex dated to before the epidemic, so presumably this could be easily corrected by giving the rationale an archaeologist used to select these youths.

Assessing signs and symptoms and the epidemiology of past disease requires correctly using ancient and medieval documents. Medical treatises are not necessarily as helpful as they may seem. Medieval authors often copied classical texts that were centuries old and their new observations were heavily influenced by contemporary philosophical paradigms [2]. Instead, a variety of documents that can be broadly classified under government records (tax and manor rolls, wills, court records, etc); biographies and hagiographies; chronicles, annals and medieval histories can all be very useful in part because the disease is often not the main focus of the account [2].

Using such an array of ancient and medieval works has plenty of pitfalls even for historians, much less those from other disciplines. Mitchell has outlined a number of pitfalls to retrospective diagnosis from medieval texts that I will try to summarize with a few notes of my own [2].

1. Not enough information in the source for an accurate diagnosis.
2. An apparent eye-witness account is actually copied from an older source.
3. Translation is not representative enough of the original language for diagnosis.
4. Inadequate knowledge (of the researcher) of disease signs and symptoms and how they are represented in this cultural context.
5. Cherry picking symptoms to fit a theory.
6. Failure to understand that a source is not representative of the body of contemporary sources.
7. Not realizing that more than one disease is present. Likewise, assuming that two or more diseases are present when they are not.
8. Assumption that the antique or medieval disease is one that still exists today.
9. Assumption that the characteristics of the disease have not changed from then until now, including transmission methods. Likewise, assuming that characteristics of the microbe must have significantly changed over time.
10. Failure to understand how the environment and living conditions change the epidemiological characteristics of the epidemic.

Epidemiology is the most difficult parameter to assess. For ancient and medieval epidemics, I find it very difficult to consider epidemiology part of the retrospective diagnostic process. There are simply too many variables in the environment and human cultures of the past. Even diseases like malaria and influenza that we think we know so well still throw us surprises today [3]. Not even seasonality is set in stone as the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic recently showed us. After now centuries of study, we still can be hard pressed to explain the rise and fall of malaria. By it’s very definition, a pandemic is an extraordinary situation compounded by historical distance for study of historic outbreaks.

Even removing it from the diagnostic process, epidemiology is still one of the most important fields of study for past epidemics. If we can answer the important epidemiological questions on past epidemics then I think we can say that we understand at least the science of the epidemic. For many well-known pathogens like influenza and plague, we have had many outbreaks but very few pandemics to learn from to prepare for future threats.

[1] Little, L. (2011). Plague Historians in Lab Coats Past & Present, 213 (1), 267-290 DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtr014

[2] Mitchell, P. (2011). Retrospective diagnosis and the use of historical texts for investigating disease in the past International Journal of Paleopathology, 1 (2), 81-88 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpp.2011.04.002

[3] Raoult D (2011). Molecular, epidemiological, and clinical complexities of predicting patterns of infectious diseases. Frontiers in microbiology, 2 PMID: 21687417

[4] Scasciamacchia S, Serrecchia L, Giangrossi L, Garofolo G, Balestrucci A, Sammartino G, et al. Plague epidemic in the Kingdom of Naples, 1656–1658. Emerging Infectious Disease. 2012 Jan . http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1801.110597

.

Topic: Dancing Mania, choreomania

Time and Place: Strasbourg, Holy Roman Empire, 1518

Audience: General

Discussion:

This was a good book to wrap up 2011 with – from the Arab Spring, to summer revolutions and the fall’s occupy movement – conditions are approaching those of 1518. Among the peasants of Strasbourg, life in the early 16th century had become miserable. The church and monasteries left the peasants spiritually desolate and literally starving while their tithes of grain were sold at prices they couldn’t afford. Poor harvests and high inflation made famine a real possibility. There were several peasant revolts leading up to 1518 that were brutally put down with public executions and massacres. Ancient ties between the nobility, church and common people had broken down such that secular and ecclesiastic office holders no longer seemed to care for the welfare of the common people.

In July 1518 Frau Toffea was outdoors in the street of Strasbourg when she began to dance. There was no music or joy in her dancing. The spectacle soon became horrifying as it became apparent that she could not stop. Eventually she collapsed from the heat and exhaustion. When she woke up, she began to dance again in the same frenzy. Soon other people in Strasbourg began their trance-like dancing ignoring the heat and the need for food and water. When they were able to speak, they begged bystanders to make them stop. Before long in the July heat, people began dropping not to get up again – did they dance to an exhausted death or was there a pathological cause?

The people of Strasbourg didn’t see this as a psychological disorder but either physical or spiritual. At first they turned to the newly respected, university trained physicians who strangely proscribed more dancing as a cure. They assigned people to make sure the afflicted kept dancing even when they were capable of stopping. It became very apparent that this was not helping the death rate. Before long physicians and townspeople agreed that this was a spiritual ailment that required a pilgrimage to the local shrine of St Vitas. Fascinatingly the people believed that a saint patronized by epileptics could/would also curse people to uncontrolled movements like the dancing if they were displeased. Throughout this region of Germany and the Netherlands there are shrines to Vitas and other saints to prevent epilepsy and the dancing plague. Late medieval people greatly feared epilepsy and similar disorders because it could be perceived as demonic possession or a curse (by victim as well as bystander). Waller argues that this was something like a case of spiritual post traumatic stress disorder. His argument is too complicated for me to explain here but it is a worthwhile and thought provoking discussion.

Narrative: B+ The narrative was well written and kept me eager to continue reading. This is no small feat without a central cast of characters to follow through the book. He tries to use Frau Troffea as a continuing theme but just doesn’t have enough information to really flesh out her life.  There were places that I wished for more scientific context. I wish he had not saved so much of the science for the last chapter.

Historical Content: A- This is not a time period that I am very familiar so it is hard to assess how well he covered the historical questions. While he discussed actions of the church, he apparently didn’t have sources from within the church. This seems strange as the church usually has better resources than secular courts. The discussion of the religious context was good and mostly from the lay viewpoint.

Scientific Content: B-/C+ He seems to be reaching too far in some of the psychological parallels he tries to draw to the choreomania (dancing plague). Practices that intentionally create trances or mystical dancing are not good matches to the unintentional and unwanted dancing in 1518. The contagious nature of the dancing of 1518 is based at least partially upon the fear of the mania. Waller describes all mystical experiences in terms of pathology, which seems unwarranted. His brief discussion of an outbreak of uncontrollable laughing in Tanzania in 1963 left me wanting to know more (p. 216). A recent Ugandan outbreak of “nodding syndrome” where youths display uncontrollable nodding when they try to eat has been associated with a parasite that causes river blindness. In all three outbreaks, these may be related to epileptic-like behavior. My point here is that we can’t jump to the conclusion that initial cases are all psychological, even if some of the contagious nature does seem psychological (people being effected by watching etc).

I also have to take issue with a reviewers quote the publisher put on the back of the book. A quote from New Scientist stated “It’s a book to make you grateful for the historical increase in human sanity.” Part of the author’s argument is that manifestations of stress and PTSD are culturally dependent and that we express stress differently today. When we consider how many people today take medication for anxiety/stress, depression, PTSD or other psychological conditions it is questionable if there has been a “historical increase in human sanity” – not that manifestations of stress are necessarily measures of sanity anyway.

References and Usability: B The bibliography and notes are integrated together. This makes the bibliography much more difficult to use. The notes are consecutively numbered for the entire book and were a little sparse.  There are 238 notes for 231 pages of text. There were plenty of places I would have liked to have seen that he had a reference for a fact.

Illustrations:  B The maps and illustrations included were okay. It could have used a map of the local Strasbourg area that included the shrine of St Vitas.

Overall, I did enjoy the book and it is a very interesting episode in medical history. Community reaction to the outbreak is as interesting and influential as the disorder itself.  The power of the brain is almost always underestimated. Even if it wasn’t completely psychological, it manifested in ways that were surely under the control of the brain.

A tangent:  one of my favorite quotes from Waller’s book is not on the dancing mania at all. “Syphilis was the flagellum Dei, God’s whip, a stark warning about the sinfulness of adultery and fornication.” If it was the flagellum Dei before the invention of the microscope, imagine how they would have reacted to seeing a spirochete!

Malaria study area (Hulden et al, 2005)

When I think of Finland, malaria just doesn’t normally come to mind. Although northern climes often have swarms of mosquitoes, its hard to imagine mosquito-borne infections gaining much traction in the short summer season. Yet defying imagination, malaria has thrived in northern Finland, Sweden and Russia near the arctic circle in the past. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax caused outbreaks in northern Europe. Despite the outbreak of P. falciparium at Archangelsk in the 1930s, P. vivax is believed to be the primary malarial species in northern Europe.

Finnish researchers Lena Huldén, Larry Huldén, and Kari Heliövaara focused on the 1800-1870 period in southern Finland as having the ideal demographic, medical and temperature records before the advent of quinine to study malaria transmission in cold climates.

Medical records are available for Finland from annual reports of ‘district physicians’ and local ministers for most of the 19th century. Doctors were stretched thin across Finland but in the fifty years between 1826 to 1870 there were 542 reports of malaria. Ministers were required to record the cause of death of their parishioners from 1749.  Digitization of parish records by the Finnish Genealogical Society has made this data available online for 1800-1850. Terms used for malaria were specific enough that general fever terms in the records did not correlate with malaria outbreaks or temperatures.

Malaria isn’t recorded in Finland until the 17th century, probably brought by migrant workers and gained traction among people gathered for summer infrastructure projects in southern Finland in the 18th century. Death records and physician reports indicate that during mid-19th century epidemics the mortality rate reached as high as 3% of the population with 7-20% infected. The worst epidemic occurred in 1862.

There are three Anopheles mosquito species found in Finland. All are believed to have been present in Finland since prehistory.  It had been thought summer temperatures of 16 C (60.8 F) were required to maintain endemic malaria, but malaria has been recorded areas in of northern Sweden and Finland that don’t reach 16C in the summer. Males die shortly after mating and female Anopheles must hibernate from late summer until well into spring. Therefore, the female spends most of its life indoors hibernating with humans and sheltered domestic livestock. The female will take sporadic nocturnal blood meals over the winter but won’t lay her eggs until spring.

Huldén,  Huldén, and Heliövaara correlated malarial deaths with annual, seasonal and monthly temperatures. The only significant correlation occurred between summer temperatures of the previous year, but not at all with annual or seasonal temperatures of the same year. Malarial deaths peaked in the spring rather than the usual late summer or autumn. So how does this work with a temperature correlation to the previous summer? Winter infections. The previous summer temperatures effect how many mosquitoes will be hibernating over the winter in homes. Sporadic blood meals over the winter in the confined space of the home spreads the infection to most of the humans and other hibernating mosquitoes causing infections that peak in the spring. Humans are the primary reservoir of infection in cold climates. It doesn’t matter that the malarial sporozoites won’t mature outdoors during the cool summer because they will mature in the cozy confines of winter homes. Fatal spring infections in 40-50 infants born in the winters from 1750 to 1850 supports the theory that the female mosquitoes were capable of transmitting malaria for the entire winter.

Age distribution among the malarial deaths was very similar to the total population indicating that all ages groups were equally vulnerable to infection. Huldén,  Huldén, and Heliövaara interpret this as indicating infection occurred at a time when the entire family would be together in heated buildings, in the winter rather than in summer when  occupations cause families to live apart by age and gender often in unheated buildings.

Epidemiological data can usually be explained but not necessarily predicted. They have provided another example of why epidemiology can’t always be definitive in ruling in or ruling out the diagnosis of a historic epidemic. Based on outdoor temperatures malaria should have never been endemic in Finland at all. This study highlights the importance of the indoor environment for malaria (and other zoonoses).

Reference

Huldén L, Huldén L, & Heliövaara K (2005). Endemic malaria: an ‘indoor’ disease in northern Europe. Historical data analysed. Malaria journal, 4 (1) PMID: 15847704

1. Pandemic Influenza: 1510-2010
2. Beyond Pelusium
3. Did India and China Escape the Black Death?
4. Vampire Prevention in Eighth Century Ireland
5. Rinderpest, Measles and Medieval Emerging Infectious Diseases
6. The Vampire in the Plague Pit
7. Hunting Pathogens in the Siberian Permafrost
8. Plague in 18th century Egypt
9. DNA of the Black Death at East Smithfield, London
10. Plague DNA from Late Antique Bavaria
11. Epidemiology of the Russian Flu, 1889-1890

Happy New Year!!

Holiday Posts

Fungal art from sciencingsara.tumblr.com h/t to The Febrile Muse

A Schooner of Science brings us the science of holly.

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog brings us a holiday update and some holiday riddles.

Jonathan Jarrett of A Corner of Tenth Century Europe brings us a Christmas Charter madlib if you have any disposable land to unload.

Carl Pyrdum of Got Medieval brings us the war on Christmas,  Uther’s Christmas Knight, and a new medieval marginalia. He also has a guest post by Sir Ten-to-Three on Christmas Past.

Puff the Mutant Dragon brings us the history and science of the Poinsettia.

William Eamon of the Labrynth of Nature brings us the story of Johannes Kepler and the Star of Bethleham.

Continuity of history and science

Continuing with  history of science, Kate Stidham of the group blog Wonders and Marvels tells us about a 17th century text called the Compleat Midwife Practice and its complicated authorship and Lauren Renaud tells us about how the dental woes of the Sun King led to the profession of dentistry.

The History of Vaccines Blog brings us news that mammalian cell lines will be used to produce new influenza vaccines, replacing the 50-year-old egg method. This is also covered by Vincent Rancello of the Virology Blog who argues that this is not the direction we need to be going and also a post on the Megavirus, the largest virus ever found.

Puff the Mutant Dragon also brings us up to date on the recent controversy over lab-bred avian flu and fears that it is a biosecurity risk.

Jennifer Frazer of The Artful Amoeba has a post on the toxic vapors produced by red-tides in the Gulf of Mexico and another on  brain-eating amoebas.

Michael Walsh of Infectious Landscape brings us up-to-date on Amoebaosis of the GI system, sometimes referred to as amoebic dysentery. At his Germscape microblog, Michael Walsh has posted several recent maps on malaria epidemiology, the most recent one can be found here but browse the last several posts for more on malaria. He has also posted the 2011 map of West Nile virus transmission in the European Union.

Maryn McKenna of Superbug has been busy with her bad bugs. Lets start with a good post on the dangers of sleeping with your pet, then on the FDAs failure to stop agricultural antibiotic abuse, and wind up with fecal transplants.

Anthropology

Anthropologist Kate Clancy of Context and Variation writes an important post on the role of science blogging in academia.

Krystal D’Costa of Anthropology in Practice is thinking about toys and finding marbles, and why we deny the sick role.

Patrick Clarkin has an interesting post on the growth differences in growing up in North Korea and South Korea and a post on the opportunity costs of war.

Katy Meyer of  Bones Don’t Lie writes about height variation in medieval Italy, on her frustration over a lack of aging standards for human remains, and about cranial modification (or the original cone heads) and still no discussion of the Huns!!!

Medieval Miscellany

I wrote about an outbreak of plague in Lombardy in the 560s on my blog Heavenfield.

Tim Clarkson of Senchus asks if Merlin really existed?

Mak Wilson of Badonicus writes a two-part post on the mysterious Attacotti people of Roman Britain. Part two is here.

Guy Halsall of Historian on the Edge revisits good ole King Chilperic.

Jonathan Jarrett of A Corner of the Tenth Century brings us a little propaganda stamped right into coinage during the Investiture Controversy.

Esmerald’s Cumbrian History and Folklore explains the relationship between folklore of elf-shot by mermaids and some of our modern medical terms.

Have a Happy New Year and I’ll be back with new content after the New Year.

I’ve never been a big fan of rubrics but it could be useful here. Using a rubric will force me to consider all of these aspects of the book. I’m not particularly interested in coming up with a final grade. For some books, it may be OK to get a poor grade on one aspect. For example, the degree of referencing will depend on the target audience and the niche the book is looking to fill in the market as much as the author’s preference. Likewise, some books don’t attempt much of a narrative.

This is for non-fiction monographs only! I expect that it will be primarily for history of science/medicine and perhaps some science.

Book Review Format

Book Citation:

Topic:

Time and Place:

Audience:

Discussion:

Narrative grade

A = Hooked me from the beginning. Constructed a compelling narrative with good informative structure. Context and background does not break the flow. There is a logical flow from chapter to chapter.

B = Sections of good narrative and a logical flow between topics; context and background may not be well-integrated into the narrative.

C = Narrative doesn’t pull you through the book. Context or background chapters disrupt the narrative flow. Context and background information may be missing.

D = No attempt at narrative, reads like an interesting textbook or spliced together blog.

F = Reads like a boring textbook more concerned with packing in facts than story or argument.

Historical Content grade

A =  Addresses the primary historical questions on the topic or event without unnecessary tangents. Clear thesis statement or discussion supported by sections of the book.  Uses primary sources, artifacts, or data to support their topic/argument; primary sources are translated. Makes appropriate and relevant comparisons to modern life.

B = Addresses the primary historical questions with some unnecessary tangents. Thesis statement or discussion that is not as well supported as it could be. Uses primary sources, artifacts or data; primary sources are translated. Makes inappropriate comparisons to modern life.

C = Gaps in the topic coverage with little use of primary sources. Tangents  distract from the main topic or argument and tax the patience of the reader.  A few inaccurate facts or improbable interpretations. Makes inappropriate comparisons to modern life.

D = Thesis discussion is vague and unsupported by the text.  Large gaps in coverage and/or many inaccurate facts. Uses primarily secondary sources. Tangents seriously distract the reader from the main topic of the book indicating poor structure.

F = No thesis statement or main argument. Structure is poorly planned and executed. Uses only non-academic secondary sources with inaccurate interpretations of facts. Cherry picking sources to only support their argument.

Scientific Content grade

A = Correct, up-to-date scientific information with logical interpretations presented at the appropriate reading level for the audience.  If an argument is being made, science is correctly used to support the argument without bias.

B = Correct modern scientific information and conventional interpretations. Most of the information is presented at the right reading level.

C = A few incorrect scientific statements or improbable interpretations. Much of the information is not at the target reading level. Unnecessary scientific facts inserted into a historical narrative.

D = Some incorrect scientific statements and interpretations.  Incorrect scientific interpretations used to support a historical argument. Inconsistent reading level.

F = Incorrect scientific statements and interpretations used to support biased positions. Pseudoscience, uses some poor ‘science’ studies to support their position.

References and Usability grade

A = Full references with footnotes/endnotes and a complete bibliography. Appropriate historic or scientific sources. The footnotes/endnotes and bibliography are easily usable. Maps and figures are located within the text where they are most useful. Fully indexed.

B= Bibliography with only a few footnotes/endnotes on the most important facts. Footnotes/endnotes are available but not easily usable. Appropriate historic or scientific sources. Figures and maps are located all together (front or separate section) rather than within text. Could have used more maps or figures. Selectively indexed.

C = Selected bibliography or suggested reading list. No footnotes/endnotes and little or no index. Not enough maps or figures.

D = Slim or incomplete selected bibliography or suggested reading list. Little or no index.

F = No references or reading list, little or no index.

(Ironically I can see that books with poor referencing could have good maps and figures based on different audiences or targeted niches)

Illustrations

A = Plenty of maps and figures to aid the reader. Maps, figures and photos are well labeled with clear legends and referenced. Color illustrations if color aids understanding. Tables are professionally produced and easily read, complicated data is presented in tables.

B = Enough maps and figures for the reader follow the text. Maps, figures and photos are labeled and referenced. No color illustrations. Tables may be overly complicated and figures have difficult legends. Complicated data is not incorporated into table.

C = Not enough maps or figures for the reader to easily follow the argument of the book. Maps and figures are minimally labeled and with poor references. Tables not used to present data.

D = Lacks enough maps and figures to understand the text. Maps and figures have insufficient labels and legends to understand the illustration. No references on the illustrations.

F = Lacks (enough) maps and figures. Labels or legends are confusing or incorrect.

This rubric is obviously evolving. I could use some suggestions and criticisms. Do you seen any inconsistencies? Something that is missing? I’d love some feedback from authors and avid readers!

(Edited Dec 26, 2011)

Ancient and Medieval Life

Tim Clarkson of Senchus asks Where’s the beef? in early Edinburgh.

I wrote about new information on the Staffordshire hoard of gold scrap on Heavenfield.

Guy Halsall of Historian on the Edge shares his latest writing project on the Genesis of the Frankish Aristocracy  in four parts. It would have been helpful to provide links to the other three parts! (part 2, part 3, part 4)

Krystal D’Costa of Anthropology in Practice writes about the use of cock’s crow to keep time in the Middle Ages.

Bamburgh Research Project has posted a report of their re-excavation of Brian Hope-Taylor’s trench at Bamburgh including finding old archaeology placement tags and new finds in the enlarged trench. They were able to confirm occupation of Bamburgh Rock back to neolithic times (5000 years before present).

Jonathan Jarrett of A Corner of Tenth Century Europe has been busy updating us on his trips and conferences, and sometimes a combination thereof like his recent post on Lastingham. He also reviewed Richard Hodges’ Goodbye to the Vikings?

Magistra et Mater wrote an interesting post on slavery viking style.

Thinking of ancient warfare, Adrienne Mayor of the group blog Wonders & Marvels writes of the first chemical agents as ancient crowd control.

William Eamon of the Labrynth of Nature writes about Renaissance astrology and the black pepper markets. Reminds me how my favorite 8th century monk had a pouch of pepper among his meager possessions to pass on to his students at his death.

Book Reviewer extraordinaire Curt Emanuel, the Medieval History Geek, has been blogging up a storm lately. My recent favorite post is The Almanni: A Roman Myth and his latest book review is of The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity.

Kristina Killgrove’s Roman DNA Project has released a post with the project’s goals. And at her blog Powered by Osteons, she writes about differentiating cranial vault deformation from aliens. How about something a little closer to your usual time period? I’d like to know more about cranial vault modification among those pointy headed Huns.

Katy Meyers of Bones Do Not Lie has been busy writing with posts on the practice of Os Resectum, the New World-Old World debate on syphilis, and on using historical texts to retrospectively diagnose disease.

A Contagious Landscape

Marri Lynn on the group blog Wonders & Marvels of the Leper’s Legendary Decay.

I wrote about the evidence (or lack of it) that India and China experienced the Black Death here at Contagions.

Elizabeth Lehfeldt of the group blog Wonders & Marvels writes of female confessors during the Black Death.

Lindsey Fitzharris of the group blog Wonders & Marvels tells us about the use of  “corpse medicine” in early modern England. On her own blog The Chirurigeon’s Apprentice Lindsey writes about bloodletting, leeching and cupping and concepts of what lies beyond the grave in early modern England.

Tara Smith of Aetiology discusses the risks of castrating lambs with your teeth!

Michael Walsh of Infection Landscapes brings us a profile of rotavirus. At his Germscape microblog, he discusses maps of a recent E. coli outbreak and the global spread of hepatitis B and the global spread of chronic hepatitis C.

Flu season is upon us in the northern hemisphere again, so influenza is back in the news. Vincent Racaniello of the Virology Blog writes about a much hyped discovery and experimentation with the lethal avian H5N1 flu virus in ferrets.

Connor Bamford of the Rule of 6ix has also been writing about influenza, wondering where influenza hides in the summer and about dendritic cells acting as Trojan horses for viruses. Connor also hosted the latest edition of the MolBio Carnival.

Finalists for Open Lab 2011 have been announced. Check out some of the best posts of 2011. This list of 51 posts was chosen from over 700 nominated posts for this year.

Whew! This should be enough to keep you reading for a while. Enjoy!