London medical school makes library of ancient bones digitally available for study

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/08/london-medical-school-makes-library-of-ancient-bones-digitally-available-for-study/

London medical school makes library of ancient bones digitally available for study
By Maev Kennedy, The Guardian
Sunday, December 8, 2013 16:31 EST

The bones of a young woman who died of syphilis more than 500 years ago, the reassembled jaw of a man whose corpse was sold to surgeons at the London hospital in the 19th century and the contorted bone of an 18th-century man who lived for many years after he was shot through the leg, are among the remains of hundreds of individuals which can now be studied in forensic detail on a new website.

The Digitised Diseases website, to be launched on Monday at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, brings together 1,600 specimens, many from people with excruciating conditions including leprosy and rickets, from stores scattered across various university and medical collections. The original crumbling bones of some specimens now available in 3D scans are too fragile to be handled. The database is intended for professionals, but is also available free to members of the public who may be fascinated by the macabre specimens.

“We believe this will be a unique resource both for archaeologists and medical historians to identify diseases in ancient specimens, but also for clinicians who can see extreme forms of chronic diseases which they would never see nowadays in their consulting rooms, left to progress unchecked before any medical treatment was available. These bones show conditions only available before either by travelling to see them, or in grainy black and white photographs in old textbooks,” said Andrew Wilson, senior lecturer in forensic and archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford and the lead researcher on the project He added: “I do think members of the public will also find them gripping – they do have what one observer called ‘a grotesque beauty’.”

Some of the conditions were thought to have been almost eliminated but are now on the increase, including diseases of poverty such as tuberculosis and rickets.



unhappycamper comment: As of this posting, the Digitised Diseases website is not yet up --> http://barc.sls.brad.ac.uk/digitiseddiseases/index.php

[dipsydoodle]

1. Well having stuck it in my head probably for the rest of the day

I might as well subject you to it too.

Backing group for loads of Ella stuff in the '40s - Paper Moon etc.