The cholera epidemic of the 1850's ravaged nations around the world, and now a graveyard in Italy may provide clues about of this deadly disease.
Graves neighboring the Badia Pozzeveri church in Tuscany are being examined, in order to detail this historic epidemic. Bodies of those who perished during this event are buried in one area of the cemetery.
Cholera victims in this graveyard were buried and encased in lime, possibly to prevent the disease from spreading. However, this material hardened around the bodies, largely preserving the bones they covered. This process made these remains among the best-preserved corpses of any victims of the deadly disease. Lime also preserved many of the bacteria and other microorganisms that were buried along with the cadavers.
The site provides researchers with a means of examining the general health of people in the region over a period of 1,000 years. A monastery was founded near the grounds in 1056, and people were buried in and near the graveyard until modern times. Among these were numerous victims of the Black Death that ravaged Europe for seven years, beginning in 1346.
"We have a thousand-year window into the health of this village. It is a microcosm of what is happening in Italy and all of Europe during this time frame," Clark Spencer Larsen an anthropology professor at The Ohio State University, said.
The Field School in Medieval Archaeology and Bioarchaeology at Badia Pozzeveri was established through a partnership between Ohio State, the University of Pisa, and community leaders near Badia Pozzeveri. The group has excavated between 20 and 30 skeletons from the graveyard, over a period of four years, for analysis. Their study is aimed at learning how the people of the area lived over time, including their general health and causes of death.
The famous 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak in London, where contaminated water was identified as a source of the disease, was part of this epidemic. During an outbreak of the disease in the Soho district of London, physician John Snow undertook a careful examination of the locations of victims, and matched it against a map of the public water system. He found a single water pump on Broad Street, now called Broadwick Street, responsible for the spread of the disease. Disabling the device helped to end the epidemic in the area, and advanced scientific study of epidemics.
Although researchers have not found remains of Virbrio cholera, the bacteria which causes the deadly disease, their quest for the organisms continues.
"We haven't found it yet, but we are hopeful. We've found other DNA associated with humans so we're continuing the search," Larsen said.
Cholera exists to this current day, with three to five million cases and more than 100,000 deaths reported worldwide every year.
