OBJECTIVES The 14(th) -century Black Death was one of the most devastating epidemics in human history, killing tens of millions of people in a short period of time. It is not clear why mortality rates during the epidemic were so high. One possibility is that the affected human populations were particularly stressed in the 14(th) century, perhaps as a result of repeated famines in areas such as ...

BACKGROUND African American transplant recipients have poorer long-term outcomes than Caucasian Americans. This difference was not found in French patients, suggesting socialized medicine overcame this disparity. It has also been hypothesized that the difference relates to the higher prevalence of Black individuals who express the metabolic enzyme cytochrome P4503A5 (CYP3A5), with consequent al...

Setubal was a fishing and garrison town to the south of Lisbon which from the early sixteenth century was heavily dependent on the production of salt in the Sado estuary. Prosperous families of the town often made pious bequests in the form of salt works so the churches and confraternities also became dependent on the fortunes of the salt trade. This interdependence of salt and piety allows Abr...

Bacteria have attacked the cardiovascular system since time immemorial. The propensity for pathogenic bacteria to effect cardiovascular collapse and death has shaped human history. Black Death, caused by Yersinia pestis, killed tens of millions in China, the Middle East, and decimated onethird of the European population in the 14th century. More recently, fatalities from toxic Escherchia coli a...

The genome of a 650 year old Yersinia pestis bacteria, responsible for the medieval Black Death, was recently sequenced and assembled into 2,105 contigs from the main chromosome. According to the point mutation record, the medieval bacteria could be an ancestor of most Yersinia pestis extant species, which opens the way to reconstructing the organization of these contigs using a comparative app...

T he study of ancient pathogens from human remains is as fascinating as it is essential for our understanding of past epidemics and human health through the centuries. However, ancient pathogens, such as Yersinia pestis (plague, Black Death) or Mycobacterium tuberculosis (tuberculosis), often do not leave unambiguous pathological lesions in the skeletal remains of their victims. Thus, it is not...

BACKGROUND Recent studies have noted myriad qualitative and quantitative inconsistencies between the medieval Black Death (and subsequent "plagues") and modern empirical Y. pestis plague data, most of which is derived from the Indian and Chinese plague outbreaks of A.D. 1900+/-15 years. Previous works have noted apparent differences in seasonal mortality peaks during Black Death outbreaks versu...