this little animal is to blame

Ominous melody rattles and rattles This heightened the atmosphere in most of the villages and towns of the Middle Ages. This sound preceded one or more characters hidden in gray coat, mutilated lepers who warned of their presence so that the healthy could hide. Typically, people with leprosy do not feel pain. Leprosy first destroys the nerve, which deprives all sensitivity of the skin, which is torn off along with the cartilage of the face.

For the medieval mentality they were dead while alive, closer to god but at the same time, under their layers they hid the horror of their wounds, which were considered God’s punishment for your sins. They were actually caused by infection with the bacillus. Mycobacterium leprosy. Its evolutionary history has been traced, and in recent years it has been suspected that it is a small and friendly rodent that still suffers from M. leprosy, red squirrelcould serve as a host and carrier of microbacteria in medieval times.

This suspicion was confirmed by a recent comparative analysis of ancient samples published in a scientific journal. Current biology. “Through our genetic analysis, we were able to identify red squirrels as the first ancient animal carrier of leprosy“, the note says Verena Schunemann, a paleogenetics researcher at the University of Basel in Switzerland and co-principal investigator of the study. “The history of leprosy is much more complex than previously thought.”

This terrible disease, known since ancient times and mentioned in the Bible, continues. currently present in some regions of Africa, Asia and South America.. In the Middle Ages, when a person was diagnosed with leprosy, in order to avoid infection, he was forced to leave his community and live outside its walls, in certain places known as leper colonies, which served as rudimentary hospitals.

fur trade

In the latest study, researchers analyzed the remains of 12 medieval squirrels and 25 humans at two archaeological sites in Winchester looking for remains M. leprosy. Analyzed human remains come from a necropolis adjacent to the chapel Saint Magdalene, a saint associated with lepers along with Saint Lazarus. Situated on a hill near Winchester and active between the 12th and 17th centuries, this chapel was one of the best studied and best known in medieval England.

During the same period, the city was well known for its links to fur trade routes and, in this context, Squirrel skin was used to make clothing.. Specimens of this small rodent were recovered from several small bones from an old fur factory pit found on the grounds of Staple Gardens. Since squirrels are quite sociable with people, some squirrels can also be considered as pets.

From all the samples analyzed and compared, the researchers achieved reconstruct four genomes of four medieval strains of microbacteria, one of them is present in red squirrels and all have a common origin. The strain of leprosy present in squirrels shows a much closer relationship to infections in medieval Winchester than to strains present in the same rodent species today.

“The medieval red squirrel lineage we discovered is more closely related to medieval human lineages from the same city than to strains isolated from modern red squirrels. Overall, our results indicate independent circulation of the strains M. leprosy between humans and red squirrels in the medieval period,” Schunemann explains.

Zoonosis

This means that in the Middle Ages there were cases of zoonotic diseasesThat is, the squirrels, in addition to suffering from the disease, were able to transmit it to humans, something that had never been demonstrated or documented before. This does not exclude other routes of infection, for example between infected people, which is the reason for isolation in leper colonies.

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“Our results highlight the importance of involving archaeological material, particularly animal remains, in studying the long-term zoonotic potential of this disease, as only direct comparisons of ancient human and animal strains allow us to reconstruct possible transmission events over time. ..over time,” he explains in the same note. Sarah Inskeep, a researcher at the University of Leicester and co-author of the study. Since the latest Covid-19 pandemic, more and more researchers are focusing on studying zoonotic diseases to understand the occurrence and transmission of diseases, according to Inskip.

“The role that animals may have played in the transmission and spread of disease in the past has not been considered and, as such, Our understanding of the history of leprosy will be incomplete until these hosts are considered.. “This discovery is relevant today because animal hosts continue to be neglected, although they may be important in terms of understanding the persistence of the disease today, despite efforts to eradicate it,” Schunemann concludes.