Does this explain medieval leprosy?

[Gurdur]

One of the biggest questions about medieval leprosy in Europe is,
where the hell did it go?

Leper houses and regulations were pretty common throughout western Europe, indicating quite a high number of sufferers. The leper houses also functioned as hospices, since the medieval European version of leprosy was often pretty fatal even without obvious secondary opportunistic infections. It was also pretty infectious, adult to adult, which is strange, since AFAIK it's children most in danger of infection (from adults) in modern times, and leprosy is pretty difficult to catch.

Then came in the two big waves of the Black Death, and after that, leprosy just seemed to disappear from western Europe. Chronicles of the times noted how previously full leper houses were no longer in use way after the Black Death. Leprosy just seemed to vanish from western Europe. There are a number of hypotheses as to why this was so that I have heard, including a struggle for ecological niches between Yersina pestis and Mycobacterium leprae, or between TB and leprosy.

Last year, there was a discovery of a new causative agent of leprosy, the new agent now named Mycobacterium lepromatosis, and which causes diffuse lepromatous leprosy (DLL), which can easily be fatal through destruction of skin tissue, and is marked by many pale macules, which does sound a fair bit like the medieval descriptions. The macules do not necessarily appear at all with Mycobacterium leprae. Moreover, what we in modern times know usually as leprosy, Hansen's Disease, Mycobacterium leprae, is not usually fatal at all by itself. It's the secondary infections which are fatal. But Mycobacterium lepromatosis can easily be fatal.

Anyone want to weigh in on this? I would be very grateful since I am no expert at all on any part of this at all.

[Gurdur]

I can't be the only one into medieval leprosy, surely?

Ring the handbells in solidarity, people!

[Little One-Eyed Wench]

Originally Posted by Gurdur

I can't be the only one into medieval leprosy, surely?

Ring the handbells in solidarity, people!

I've been treated like one, but have very little knowledge of the disease.

One of the puzzles of leprosy is that M leprae strains collected worldwide are virtually identical, while the clinical features of the disease and its severity vary greatly both geographically and from person to person. Evidence suggests that individual host immune factors play the key role in determining how the disease progresses.

This is interesting.

I recently read about a teenage girl who was finally diagnosed with leprosy after having a painless rash for two years. She has the same disease as ...

The research team also analyzed samples from a similar lethal case of a 31-year-old man in 2002 with so much skin damage that he was first admitted to a hospital burn unit.

... this guy?

Was there something about the Black Death that gave people immunity from leprosy? Have you read about any other peculiarities attributed to Black Death survivors?

[Gurdur]

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Little One-Eyed Wench

Was there something about the Black Death that gave people immunity from leprosy?

This has been hypothesized in the epidemological literature, but never actually shown nor proved, or even had any big hints for back-up. 'Twould take a brave and extremely lucky person to find out, too.

What seems to be the case is that a good deal of normal populaces are actually genetically very resistant to developing leprosy on confrontation with Mycobacterium leprae, but no-one knows, really, and leprosy is still very badly understood, not even the transmission routes being well-understood.

Only the nine-banded armadillo can catch leprosy apart from humans, and very obviously, there are no armadillos populating medieval Europe. So for Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, until real trade contact was made with the Americas, it was a very human-only disease.

There is a claim that only 5% of the population are at risk of catching leprosy, and the rest being wholly resistant, but this claim has been made by only one person I can find (there are those who see that claim as being yet another liberal conspiracy against them, like the liberal refusal to believe in Morgellons.

Against that, one hell of a lot of different animals can catch and carry the Black Death, Yersina pestis, and any genetic resistance against it among humans seems to be quite low, since it wiped out at least 30% of Europe when it hit in a big way.

It has been hypothesized that modern Europeans are more resistant to Yersina pestis, by virtue of being the descendents of survivors, but I have not yet seen any proof of this.

I realise that one great big huge question still remains even if Mycobacterium lepromatosis was the main cause of medieval leprosy, that being, where the hell did it go after the Black Death years, why the hell did ot disappear, and I have no ideas about that, unless one wants to hypothesize that so many lepers died off from the plague that not enough of a pool were left over for leprosy to survive in Europe.

Have you read about any other peculiarities attributed to Black Death survivors?

Nope, unfortunately.

[Gurdur]

And:

Originally Posted by Little One-Eyed Wench

I've been treated like one,

You were a board admin too?

Originally Posted by Little One-Eyed Wench

I recently read about a teenage girl who was finally diagnosed with leprosy after having a painless rash for two years. She has the same disease as ...

... this guy?

Well, apparently not; I read your link but they did not specify in it, and it seems the girl is likely to have had Mycobacterium leprae, while the guy in the Burns Unit had Mycobacterium lepromatosis.

But the girl might have had Mycobacterium lepromatosis, dunno.

[Terry]

Originally Posted by Gurdur

I can't be the only one into medieval leprosy, surely?

You know, you're a weirdo sometimes, don't you?

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Terry

You know, you're a weirdo sometimes, don't you?

Everyone says that.

Wait until I get stuck into the Black Death, Reformation-era syphilis, and smallpox. I've always found these very cheering.

[Lifelinking]

There was a little known statute brought in under King Angus the Anxiety Ridden that outlawed the dipping of one's bread in to a fellow patients head. This may of course had some effect on the reduction in numbers.

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Lifelinking

There was a little known statute brought in under King Angus the Anxiety Ridden that outlawed the dipping of one's bread in to a fellow patients head. This may of course had some effect on the reduction in numbers.

Heh heh

[Kim o the Concrete Jungle]

Maybe the population crash caused by the black death was a tough time for diseases?

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Kim o the Concrete Jungle

Maybe the population crash caused by the black death was a tough time for diseases?

This is indeed a strong possibility. There's talk of a "Malthusian Event"; the population drop in Europe owing to the Black Death (not just the disease itself, but also starvation and so on among survivors) was at least 30% and possibly almost twice as much. But still it just seems weird leprosy would simply and softly vanish away, as if it had met a Boojum.

There are some truly odd disease that popped up all around those times; for example, the "English sweating illness" has never been satisfactorily diagnosed (and no, it wasn't malaria, malaria being a disease that the Fen Country and East Anglia knew quite well), and whatever it was, the "English sweating illness" makes one and one only epidemic wave, never to reappear again, and with no historical antecendents.

[homo hirsutus]

As is the norm in these situations I'm going to blame it on rods. It's really sad that high-def cameras are leading to their extinction.

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by homo hirsutus

As is the norm in these situations I'm going to blame it on rods. It's really sad that high-def cameras are leading to their extinction.

I hate to admit this, but I do not understand your meaning at all.

[homo hirsutus]

Rods are the term for the marks created on a picture or video still when a moth or other winged insect flies in front of the camera. For a while conspiracy theorists thought they were aliens or other creature. In the US (or the part where I live) it became a common joke to blame anything that did not have an obvious explanation on rods, sort of like a flying spaghetti monster or some such thing. With the use of high-def cameras a moth turns out looking, well, like a moth. With the more seldom use of old cameras with slow shutter speeds rods are rarely seen anymore, hence their "extinction."[/derail]

[Gurdur]

Ah. Many thanks, now I get the joke. I am but a Bear Of Very Little Brain sometimes.

[BeaverIslander]

Didn't Reformation-era syphilis take Henry VIII?

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by BeaverIslander

Didn't Reformation-era syphilis take Henry VIII?

I had no idea, so I looked it all up, and while syphilis was mooted, it seems that Henry VIII was more likely to have died of untreated Type-2 diabetes, with resultant skin ulcers and boils. He does seem to have richly deserved an ulcerated death; not the most pleasant of people at all.

Plus you caught me out on a mistake: I should have written Renaissance, not Reformation. The period of around 50 years where syphilis first broke out and was a deadly fast illness and an epidemic is fascinating; after those first 50 years, it changed to the much slower illness we know today. As to where syphilis came from is the source of huge debate; by all accounts, I find it most likely that it was a mutation of pinta which was carried back from Central America to Europe by one or more of Christopher Columbus' sailors, carried back to Italy, just in time for a major siege of an Italian town by a French army, and the fifty-year-epidemic took off from there. But much more on all this later, and thanks for the interest; one of the best books on the subject is one that glories in the punning title, Who Gave Pinta To The Santa Maria?, and it's a subject I have been planning to post on for a long time.

[Perragrande]

When I was in college, people thought I was strange because I was raising slime molds in petri dishes in my room, and feeding them ground up oatmeal.

I was taking a course in slime molds being desperate for four hours credit in ANYTHING in my major!!!

I dare anyone to come up with a more useless college course. The dude who taught it had a Ph.D. in slime molds from the University of Texas!!

His wife taught the lab and she had a Ph.D. in Fungus!! Made for each other.

She was older and had short hair and looked sorta like Virginia Woolf.
He was younger and blonde and sorta looked like a young George Segal or Robert Redford with some fat on him type.

Since we don't have "Frau Doktor" in English, we called her "Mrs. Dr. Henney" and he was "Dr. Henney".

YAY MYXOMYCETES!! GO GO GO PLASMODIA TECH!!!

Yes, I am strange. At least I didn't raise tarantulas. My sister was also a bio major. She was into snakes. Like large pink boa constrictors. Those were fun.

[Perragrande]

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[Little One-Eyed Wench]

Years ago I remember reading a story in Maxim magazine about a (medieval?) fat king that suffered an intestinal injury. He developed gangrene and died from rotting internally. When they carried him on a platform during the funeral procession, his corpse split open and released a rather foul combination of odor and sludge.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

[BeaverIslander]

Sounds familiar, LOEW, but I'm thinking it was a pope, not a king. Hmm.