This photo has been in my queue for about a week now, and every time I open up my queue I stop and stare at it for longer than I probably should.
Paget’s disease/possible post-radiation osteosarcoma: (secondary osteosarcoma)
![Interesting trepanation news last week: In Soria, Spain, two skulls have been exhumed showing evidence of trepanation. This is remarkable because they date from the 13th and 14th centuries C.E.—a time when trepanation was not usually done in the region.
From Science Daily:
The two skulls found in the cemetery in Soria belong to a male between 50 and 55 years and a woman between 45 and 50 years. The expert points out that “another interesting aspect of this finding is that trepanation in women is considered rare throughout all periods in history. In Spain, only 10% of those trepanned skulls found belonged to women.” [ … ]
The trepanation technique differs in each of the skulls. The skull of the male has been grooved with a sharp object and it is unknown whether trepanation occurred before or after his death. López Martínez confirms that “if the procedure took place whilst still alive, there is no sign of regeneration and the subject did not survive.”
In the woman, a scraping technique was used while she was still alive. According to the researchers, she survived for a “relatively long” amount of time afterwards given that the wound scarring is advanced.
This got me thinking about a documentary I saw a while back about a Brit named Amanda Feilding. Here’s a clip of her trepanning herself in front of a mirror. (Probably unnecessary warning: graphic.)
When I get migraines, I fantasize about self-trepanation. But only for about ten seconds.
Image: Detail from “The Extraction of the Stone of Madness”, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch depicting trepanation (c.1488-1516). Via Wikipedia.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hieronymus_Bosch_053_detail.jpg)
Interesting trepanation news last week: In Soria, Spain, two skulls have been exhumed showing evidence of trepanation. This is remarkable because they date from the 13th and 14th centuries C.E.—a time when trepanation was not usually done in the region.
From Science Daily:
The two skulls found in the cemetery in Soria belong to a male between 50 and 55 years and a woman between 45 and 50 years. The expert points out that “another interesting aspect of this finding is that trepanation in women is considered rare throughout all periods in history. In Spain, only 10% of those trepanned skulls found belonged to women.” [ … ]
The trepanation technique differs in each of the skulls. The skull of the male has been grooved with a sharp object and it is unknown whether trepanation occurred before or after his death. López Martínez confirms that “if the procedure took place whilst still alive, there is no sign of regeneration and the subject did not survive.”
In the woman, a scraping technique was used while she was still alive. According to the researchers, she survived for a “relatively long” amount of time afterwards given that the wound scarring is advanced.
This got me thinking about a documentary I saw a while back about a Brit named Amanda Feilding. Here’s a clip of her trepanning herself in front of a mirror. (Probably unnecessary warning: graphic.)
When I get migraines, I fantasize about self-trepanation. But only for about ten seconds.
Image: Detail from “The Extraction of the Stone of Madness”, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch depicting trepanation (c.1488-1516). Via Wikipedia.
The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice posted this on Facebook this morning, and I couldn’t not share:
A female skull dating from 1829 with the bony skeleton of a large facial tumour (possibly caused by neurofibromatosis) involving the right side of the face. The tumour arose in the right antrum, and during five years’ growth destroyed the right malar bone, the palate, and the maxilla. Specimen from the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London.
This post from the Dissection Room over on The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice (an entire blog devoted to “the horrors of pre-anaesthetic surgery”!) is about a condition known as craniopagus parasiticus and the case of an 18th-century Bengali boy:
The normal face and head were not malformed. The brains were distinct, each invested in its own membranes; the dura mater of each adhered to that of the other at the point of contact. The chief supply of blood to the upper head was by a number of vessels passing from the membranes of one brain to that of the other. The movements of the features of the upper head appear to have been purely reflex, and by no means to have been controlled by the feelings or desires of the child. The movements of the eyes of the accessory head did not correspond with those of the child, and the eyelids were usually open, even during sleep.
His skull(s) now reside(s) at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
Did you know there are mummies in Korea? I didn’t, until I found this article from 2007 on National Geographic. (Apparently, archaeologists didn’t, either, until the bodies started showing up, as old cemeteries were moved to make way for new houses in the recent construction boom.)
This person lived about 500 years ago and was found in South Korea. According to National Geographic, the mummification is perhaps the result of a burial practice that evolved in 14th-century Korea:
“The people believed the body should dissolve in a natural manner, without external factors such as worms,” said Mark Spigelman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is known for his pioneering studies of ancient diseases found on mummified bodies around the world.
“This is why they developed a special burial custom.”
The method involves laying a body on ice for 3 to 30 days during mourning, placing the corpse inside an inner and an outer pine coffin surrounded by the deceased’s clothes, and covering the coffin in a lime soil mixture.
“In some cases, this inadvertently resulted in extremely good natural mummification,” Spigelman added. “They didn’t expect mummification and, in fact, that’s the one thing they wouldn’t want.”
This method—unlike the artificial (and brittle-making) mummification processes used in ancient Egypt—resulted in mummies that are relatively pliable, with better preserved DNA. Researchers were even able to take samples from one mummy of the virus that causes hepatitis B, which could pave the way for research that might help modern-day sufferers of the disease.
A more recent discovery—featured in the Daily Mail—is this lady, who is also believed to be about 500 years old:
She was found in Osan, in South Korea’s Gyeonggi Province, with her purse.
From Atlas Obscura’s Morbid Monday, many Mondays back:
After the second wave of the Black Death swept through Europe in the 17th century, the survivors burned the bodies, thanked god, and built monumental tributes to their deliverance.
On a grand scale, plague memorial churches, like Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, were built to celebrate the end of epidemics.
On a smaller scale other cities erected “plague columns”, public statues that served as calls to faith, indirect memorials the thousands lost, and a symbol of hope for the future sprang up across Europe.
I had to look this one up, but atabrine (the trade name for the drug quinacrine) was approved for use as an antimalarial drug in the 1930s.
Not sure if it’s still in use, but I know someone who had a psychotic episode upon arriving in Ghana (it started on the plane ride) and had to be sent back home and institutionalized for a while. This was in the early 1990s. His doctors attributed it to the antimalarial he had been prescribed before going over there for a (foiled) semester abroad.
Naval Base in the Philippines. Late WWII. Good lord you did not want to not take your atabrine.
Know a veteran who served in the tropics prior to 1985? They probably had to take therapeutic atabrine at some point, which had crazy side-effects. You know, things like “toxic psychosis”. Literally - crazy side-effects!
Joseph Vimont and Engelman - “Skull of a Hydrocephalus Child”, from Traité de Phrénologie Humaine et Comparée, 1832
(via biomedicalephemera)
This article’s a few years old, and I’m not sure if there has been follow-up research since 2008 confirming/disproving this, or not. Still interesting.
Skeleton displaying “fetal rickets”. What was once known as “fetal rickets” is actually the most common form of dwarfism, called achondroplasia. Since achondroplasia is spontaneously occurring in 85% of cases, it’s understandable that doctors would believe that nutrition of the mother was the cause of the deformity of their baby.
Around 1900-1920, a large amount of research was done regarding prenatal care and disorders in the newborn. The fetal x-ray work done by George H. Evans et al was one of the defining projects in differentiating achondroplasia from nutritional deficiencies of the mother.
(via majestic-dork)
Bedlam Burials…
There’s a great article in this month’s issue of Current Archaeology on excavations in Liverpool Street, London, which have revealed a post-Medieval cemetery. Could it contain the dead of the world’s first lunatic asylum?
Click the photo to read an extract!
Image: Skeleton excavated at Liverpool Street, via Crossrail
Treponematosis by museumoflondon on Flickr:
Adult female aged over 45 years at death with pitted lesions to the cranial bones suggestive of syphilis. This individual had also undergone autopsy as is shown by the cut mark from a craniotemy.
Interesting post on the Museum of London’s blog about the “catastrophe cemetery” created at East Smithfield for victims of the Black Death:
The plague, or the Black Death, is a particularly interesting period in London’s history; it was both short and dramatic, hitting hardest in 1349 to 50. Whilst outbreaks of plague in London would continue throughout the following two centuries (and still occur throughout undeveloped parts of the world), the largest death toll occurred in a very brief period. Families were wiped out, whole neighbourhoods destroyed and the landscape of the medieval city was changed for good.
Image: Georgian London. (Shown: Jelena Bekvalac, osteologist at Museum of London.)
Skeletons, mummies, bog bodies, exhumations. The dead, and what happens to them.
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