Historical studies of disease
tsmith | April 3, 2007I've given a few talks recently on pandemic influenza. This topic of isolation and/or quarantine hasn't come up frequently during the question-and-answer period, but almost every time I've had someone approach me after the talk to ask about it (since I mention it briefly during the presentation). It seems to be something that really concerns people, and it's a difficult topic. No one wants someone out spreading a deadly disease that could kill you or your loved ones, but at the same time, no one wants to be locked away from their loved ones if they're potentially dying from a deadly…
tsmith | January 26, 2007 Speaking of microbiology basics, along comes an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune about the petri dish, a staple of microbiology labs everywhere:
Before 1877, scientists exploring the nature and mechanics of microscopic life had a real problem. Bacteria used for study were typically cultured or grown in bottles or bowls of broth. Koch greatly improved the situation by developing ways to grow microbes in gel, which allowed researchers to separate and investigate individual types of bacteria.
But practical problems remained. It was hard to manipulate bacterial colonies through the small…
tsmith | January 23, 2007 As I described previously in this post, war and disease are inextricably intertwined:
War and its concomitant devastation and social upheaval leaves its victims at an increased risk of disease transmission to begin with due to poor sanitation, collapse of public health and medical facilities and support personnel, crowding in refugee camps, breaks in supply chains of food, medicine, and other necessary items, malnutrition and depression, and other factors.
This social upheaval frequently lasts much longer than the actual fighting. Additionally, in some cases where areas have been…
tsmith | January 17, 2007The January edition of Animalcules will be hosted here again next Thursday, January 18th. Send your entries to me: aetiology AT gmail DOT com. I'm still looking for hosts for future editions as well, so drop me a line if you'd like to help out there.
[Additionally, check out the latest Tangled Bank, with a history of science theme...]
tsmith | December 1, 2006Revere over at Effect Measure has an excellent post linking together the current bird flu situation with John Snow's investigations of 19th century cholera outbreaks. It's an interesting take on the situation--check it out.
tsmith | September 13, 2006 You may or may not be familiar with the name Ignaz Semmelweis. It's not one that's typically taught to school children, like Koch or Pasteur may be. He even tends to get glossed over in upper-level biology courses. But Semmelweis was an important figure in the history of microbiology (indeed, I picked his work as the greatest experiment in my field). Here's what I wrote about him in that post:
Semmelweis was a physician in Vienna in the 1840s, with an interested in "childbed fever," a leading cause of mortality in women who'd given birth. During this time, he noticed that the mortality…
tsmith | August 30, 2006 Yesterday's New York Times had an excellent story on the discovery of the human papilloma virus as the cause of cervical cancer, and ultimately, the development of a vaccine against it. It's also a good lesson in how, while solid evidence triumphs over anecdotes, even folk stories can be useful in ultimately pointing to a cause if they're rigorously investigated.
If you're curious about what all this has to do with the messed-up looking rabbit in the picture, click on through...
I've written previously about the new cervical cancer vaccine, and its potential to lessen dramatically the…
tsmith | August 14, 2006 The control and eventual eradication of the smallpox virus from the wild is one of the most heralded success stories in all of public health. Indeed, smallpox has played a central role in the history of vaccination. Even prior to Edward Jenner's use of the related cowpox virus to protect against smallpox disease, it was known that inoculation with materials from an infectious smallpox pustule or scab (dubbed "variolation") could protect an individual from death due to smallpox, generally resulting instead in a mild form of the illness. Jenner's observation that milkmaids seemed to be…
tsmith | August 11, 2006 Missed this while I was out last weekend, but John Hawks has a link to a story noting that a new analysis shows that Holy Roman Emperor Charles V suffered from gout, thought to play a key role in his abdication of the throne.
(More below...)
A 450-year-old piece of Charles V's pinkie lends support to the theory that it was gout that led one of the most powerful rulers of all time to abdicate, Spanish researchers report.
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, whose empire stretched across Europe and included Spanish America, was diagnosed with gout by his doctors in early adulthood. By the end of…
tsmith | July 31, 2006I was busy over the weekend (and disgusted by the hot, nasty weather that will not die), so I don't have a lot on tap for today. Luckily, though, there's some interesting stuff elsewhere that's already written up--thoughtfully saving me some of the trouble.
I discuss the link between infectious and "chronic" disease with some regularity on this site. I think it's a fascinating area; perhaps oversold by some, perhaps over-criticized by others, but certainly a hot topic and an interesting direction for research in microbiology. This weekend's New York Times had a new story that touched on…
tsmith | July 21, 2006This week's Ask a science blogger question is:
If you could have practiced science in any time and any place throughout history, which would it be, and why?...
Discussion after the fold...
Several folks have already responded with the answer of "now," and I agree. I've said before that this is an incredible time to be a scientist (funding issues notwithstanding). It's especially good to be a microbiologist. We're just starting to get a view into the incredible diversity of microbial life all around (and within!) us, and advances in our tools are allowing us to work on questions that weren'…
tsmith | June 29, 2006 People make terrible jokes about "mad cow" disease. ("Why is PMS called PMS? Because mad cow was already taken.") Pundits use it as an example of an over-hyped disease (and to be fair, estimates of total cases due to the consumption of contaminated beef in the UK have varied widely, ranging from a few thousand up to well over 100,000). Vegetarians note it as one benefit that comes from their soyburgers. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion.
So-called "mad cow" disease, in humans, is a progressive neurological disorder more correctly called variant Creuzfield-Jacob disease (vCJD).…
tsmith | June 9, 2006I wrote recently how evolution and phylogenetic analysis of HIV isolates has provided evidence that the progenitor to HIV jumped into humans in Cameroon or a nearby area. Obviously it's a topic that's interesting to me, but may seem a bit esoteric to some. RPM over at Evolgen has a new post showing another application of phylogenetic analysis to HIV that may be of interest to readers here, where infectious disease epidemiology meets CSI.
tsmith | June 6, 2006If you ever have a few minutes to kill and need someplace interesting to go on the web, the NIH's National Library of Medicine has a ton of interesting stuff. That's where I found the this reference from the early 1900s on raising children. I ran across another gem--a manuscript from 1721 written by minister Benjamin Colman regarding "Some Observations on the New Method of Receiving the Smallpox by Ingrafting or Inoculating (containing also The Reasons which first induced him to, and have since confirmed him in, his favourable Opinion of it).
(Continued below...)
What a different time…
tsmith | May 31, 2006 It can't be said often enough that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." Moving from physical characteristics--color, bone shape, the form of bacterial cells--to genetic characteristics in order to classify organisms--and infer phylogenies--was a giant advance. That the molecular characteristics confirmed what was known using physical characteristics was a breakthrough, and allowed for more sophisticated analyses of organisms that don't have bones or other easily-observable physical features that allow for simple classification into groups: microbes. I've…
tsmith | May 25, 2006I write a lot on here about evolution, and more about epidemiology. A recent article in Emerging Infectious Diseases discusses a unique combination of the two: 2,500-year Evolution of the Term Epidemic. I've said before that I'm about the farthest thing from a language scholar you can find, but it's an interesting article tracking how the usage of the term has changed since the time of the ancient Greeks.
tsmith | May 16, 2006 On a recent episode of the drama House, the medical team finds that a patient improves from his illness when he's infected with a particular species of bacteria, Legionella pneumophila. Though mysterious at the time because the cause of the patient's illness was unknown, it was later determined that the patient was infected with naegleria, an amoeba. Legionella is an intracellular bacterium that just happens to naturally live in amoeba. Therefore, when the patient was co-infected with the amoeba and Legionella, the Legionella killed off the amoeba--using one microbe to attack another.…
tsmith | May 1, 2006Interesting blast from the past: The Care and Feeding of Children, from 1894. Note the causes of colic (pg 21), advice not to play with a baby, lest it make them "irritable" or "nervous" (pg , worries about measles, diptheria, and scarlet fever (pg 62); and of course, emphasis on the dangers of masturbation (pg. 66). Some of the food recommendations make sense--sweets are discouraged, for example, but they also prohibit bread (pg 44) and bananas.
tsmith | March 27, 2006Part One: Introduction to Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses
Part Two: Introduction to Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses continued
Part Three: Bushmeat
Part Four: War and Disease
Part Five: Chikungunya
Part Six: Avian influenza
Part Seven: Reporting on emerging diseases
Part Eight: Disease and Domesticated Animals
Part Nine: The Emergence of Nipah Virus
Part Ten: Monkeypox
Part Eleven: Streptococcus suis
Part Twelve: Salmonella and fish
Part Thirteen: new swine influenza virus detected
Part Fourteen: dog flu strikes Wyoming.
Part Fifteen: Clostridium species.
Part Sixteen:…
tsmith | February 13, 2006Like, gee, 17th Century manuscripts from the Royal Society, written by Robert Hooke?
A long-lost 17th century manuscript charting the birth of modern science has been found gathering dust in a cupboard in a Hampshire home. Filled with crabby italics and acerbic asides, the 520 or so yellowing and stained pages are the handwritten minutes of the Royal Society as recorded by the brilliant scientist Robert Hooke, one of the society's original fellows and curator of experiments.
The notes describe in detail some of the most astounding and outlandish scientific thinking from meetings of the…