Posted on 06/27/2008 3:48:57 PM PDT by blam
Biblical Text-Writing May Have Poisoned Monks
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Damaged Skull
June 27, 2008 -- Medieval bones from six different Danish cemeteries reveal that monks who wrote Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been exposed to toxic mercury, which was used to formulate just one of their ink colors: red.
The study, which will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, also describes a previously undocumented disease, called FOS, which was like leprosy and caused skull lesions. Additionally, the researchers found that mercury-containing medicine had been administered to 79 percent of the interred individuals with leprosy and 35 percent with syphilis.
Since the monks, who were buried in the cloister walk of the Cistercian Abbey at Øm, did not have these diseases but contained mercury in their bones, scientists believe the monks were either contaminated while preparing and administering medicines, or while writing the artistic letters of incunabula, or pre-1500 A.D. books.
Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a University of Southern Denmark scientist at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry, suspects that ink used in the abbey's scriptorium was the culprit.
He told Discovery News "it is very human to lick the brush, if one wants to make a fine line."
Even today "one should really not touch, or much less rub, the parchment pages of an incunabulum," Lund Rasmussen said, adding that mercury "was used in the first place because cinnabar (a type of mercury) has this bright red, beautiful color."
It is also known that metallic liquid mercury was given in vapor form to diseased patients. So if the monks "were just a little careless, they would be exposed this way, however, they might also be exposed during the preparation of the medicine."
For the study, Lund Rasmussen and his team drilled bone samples from the buried individuals, some of which were also friars buried in the cloister walk of the Franciscan Friary in Svendborg. Unlike the Øm monks, the friars showed no signs of mercury poisoning. Co-author Jesper Lier Boldsen discovered the previously undocumented disease FOS while examining the skeletons.
"We do not know if FOS was fatal, but it certainly looks painful and just as severe as leprosy," Lund Rasmussen said.
While working on the study, the researchers also noted that, due to different carbon signatures, some of the medieval individuals ate a mostly marine, fish-filled diet. Lund Rasmussen suggests that the others may have "preferred beer and meat, rather than fish and water." The Cistercians were, in principal, not allowed to eat meat from any four-footed animals, but the Franciscans do not appear to have always observed this practice.
Although modern seafood may now contain high levels of mercury from environmental pollution, exposure from food would have been unlikely during the medieval period.
Other religious groups may have experienced mercury poisoning due to scripting holy texts. In a separate study, scientists from the Soreq Nuclear Research Center in Israel and the Israel Museum found cinnabar on four fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include passages from the Hebrew Bible.
University of Southern Denmark historian Kurt Villads Jensen, who did not work on the latest Danish study, told Discovery News that he believes the medieval mercury findings seem "very convincing" and that he has "absolutely no objections to the historical part of the paper, which is my main research area."
Lund Rasmussen and his team radiocarbon dated some of the studied bones, but they hope to do this for even more individuals from the test sample group, as this could reveal additional information about the possible link between mercury exposure and red ink use. By 1536, books were no longer written by hand, but were instead printed, so the scientists suspect the toxic red ink literally faded from the monastic picture.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, available at Amazon
An excellent murder mystery set in a medieval abbey. Beautifully written. One of my favorites.
It was an acute pharyngeal infection. Mercury had zilch to do with it.
EVERYBODY with a fever got calomel (mercurous chloride) because it made you salivate and sweat. The old-fashioned doctors that attended GW were trying to get the "humours" out of his body. A younger physician in attendance tried to suggest a tracheotomy (iirc), but was overruled.
He probably would have died anyway because of the massive infection and lack of antibiotics.
I wish I had a dollar for everybody who bought it because it was a best-seller, then read 5 pages and parked it on the coffee table . . . very worthwhile but not an easy read.
Leprosy has been around a long time. I wonder if this is just a variant form.
Wonder how much mercury you have to be carrying around before you are symptomatic?
incunabulum: interesting word. it may be mis-used in this context since it appears to only refer to printed, not handwritten documents:
incunabulum is a book, single sheet, or image that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe.
Great historical murder mystery “name of the rose” set in a monastery in the Middle Ages.
Movie had Sean Connery as the churchman/detective who solves the case.
Netflix has it but, as yours, it is in German with English subtitles. I plugged the title in eBay and got a number of hits that show DVDs in English, so if you're not in eBay, you ought to be able to find them at other sellers.
BTW, appreciated the subtle clue in your original post.
And, the article is another example of life imitating art even the the art came later.
Sucks to be a rubicator.
Close. Name of the Rose.
Won't spoil it for those who haven't yet read it.
I highly recommend reading (or listening) to it to anyone who hasn't done so yet.
What makes you sure you aren't?
Look at the candidates and tell me you aren't in Hell...
Wow.
You are a god!
I am neither a doctor nor have I played one since I was 3 or 4. I got my information from Thomas Hager’s “Demon Under the Microscope”. He has a master’s degree in medical microbiology and immunology. He stated in the book that GW was treated with massive doses of Mercury and that it may have been responsible for worsening his condition, but you may be right.
LOL
Powdered cinnabar
I don't know the answer to that one, but my guess is that if it did, one might be able to use it as a thermometer. :-D
The mercury was SOP in those days. Calomel was the usual vehicle, and if that killed you quick, everybody would have been dead, because people took it like aspirin. I have my gg grandfather's Civil War letters, he took the stuff all the time. If you OD'd on it, it could loosen your teeth, and eventually you'd get hand tremors.
In other words, I'm sure it didn't do you any good over the long haul, but it didn't kill you quick. GW got sick and was dead in less than three days, iirc he caught cold riding in a cold rain.
But drawing half the blood volume of an elderly man was NOT a good idea (even by the standards of the time)! GW was a strong believer in bloodletting and urged his physicians to remove more blood (sometimes it's the doctor's responsibility to ignore his patient). It certainly made him weaker, but the acute pharyngitis is probably still what killed him.
Oh very good.
Sucks to be a rubicator.
I heard there was going to be a rubicator convention,
but decided to cross the Rubi-Con later.
It bites to be a masticating ruminant.
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