A case study of possible differential diagnoses of a medieval skeleton from Denmark: leprosy,ergotism, treponematosis,sarcoidosis or smallpox?

This paper uses macroscopic and radiological examinations to provide differential diagnoses of pathological lesions in the skeleton of a young woman, 20–25 years of age, which triggered the Danish palaeopathologist Vilhelm Møller‐Christensen's interest in leprosy. The skeleton was incomplete, but the majority of bones of the upper body, as well as the skull, were present. The pathological changes consisted of medullary and cortical lytic foci, periosteal reaction and enhanced cortical density. The lesions were most extensive on the left side, especially around the elbow, wrist and scapula. Treponematosis, leprosy, smallpox, ergotism, rheumatoid arthritis, tuberculosis and sarcoidosis are all reviewed with regard to bone and joint pathology and their likelihood of being the correct diagnosis. We concluded that the most plausible diagnosis is treponematosis, but neither sarcoidosis nor smallpox can be completely excluded. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Union Jack or Yellow Jack? Smallpox,Sailors, Settlers and Sovereignty

In 1877 the flagship of the Royal Navy’s Australia Station, HMS Wolverene, was quarantined in Sydney Harbour. It marked a curious moment in which the dreaded disease smallpox arrived in the city aboard three different vessels within the space of a month. With cases appearing among merchant seamen, naval sailors and local residents, this event exposed numerous antinomies in the health governance of New South Wales. If the colony’s legislative authority over the imperial warships tasked with its protection proved uncertain, so did the extent to which civic power could be exerted over the movements, property and bodies of individual citizens. Exploring the conjoint histories of the naval and medical defence of the Australian colonies, this article argues that 1877 saw these tensions playing out on different scales of sovereignty. Marking a critical point before colonial defence and quarantine strategies turned markedly against ‘Asiatics’, this incident encapsulated the uneasy state of colonial self-government amid a technological transformation of the seaways.     

A Case of Exemplarity: C. F. Rottböll's history of smallpox inoculation in Denmark–Norway, 1766

Smallpox inoculation was one of the great discoveries of the 18th century and has been written into the grand narrative of medical progress, describing the taming of epidemic disease. Setting the perspective of progress aside, the article explores how this medical innovation was situated in 18th-century society and culture. The aim is to investigate how medical practice was intertwined with social structure and cultural patterns. The article takes its case from a book published in Copenhagen in 1766 by Professor C. F. Rottböll, former Head Physician of the Royal Inoculation House in Copenhagen. Being the first medical treatise on inoculation in Denmark–Norway, the book also has a historical section followed by a collection of reports and letters written by a number of other authors from various parts of the kingdom. Through close reading, the article explores how the introduction of the new technique was described in the texts. The reports were written to present practice and discuss cases. In doing so, they also presented a variety of other concerns so that a diversity of aims and intentions are added to the medical ones. The social and rhetorical strategies employed illuminate social ambition and systems of patronage, as well as understandings of history and of truth.     

Diseases in Early Modern Sweden

In early modern Scandinavia, the population’s sensitivity to disease and food supply shortages was great. Researchers have long been interested in the crises caused by these conditions, and the dominant causes of death have been well documented in Sweden since the late eighteenth century. But for the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, in the mortality regime preceding the initial stage of the demographic transition, our understanding of the infectious diseases is significantly limited. Through an analysis of causes of death and tithe levels, this article gives new insight regarding mortality rates, harvests and, above all, diseases in a parish located in a Swedish forested area during the mid- and late seventeenth century and first half of the eighteenth century. It presents new research about which diagnoses were most common, how often the more prevalent diseases of fevers, smallpox, and dysentery broke out, and the varying role of diseases on mortality rates during bad harvest years. The inhabitants in this parish presumably had a food supply buffer in their summer farm system, yet they remained vulnerable to bad harvests, and people in the area were just as susceptible to the common infectious diseases as the inhabitants in more tightly populated areas.