Medical Discovery News
Science permeates everyday life. Yet the understanding of advances in biomedical science is limited at best. Few people make the connection that biomedical science is medicine and that biomedical scientists are working today for the medicine of tomorrow. Our weekly five-hundred-word newspaper column (http://www.illuminascicom.com/) and two-minute radio show provide insights into a broad range of biomedical science topics. Medical Discovery News is dedicated to explaining discoveries in biomedical research and their promise for the future of medicine. Each release is designed to stimulate listeners to think, question and appreciate how science affects their health as well as that of the rest of the world. We also delve into significant biomedical discoveries and portray how science (or the lack of it) has impacted health throughout history.
Medical Discovery News
The Bacteria that helped Defeat Napoleon
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1004 The Bacteria that helped Defeat Napoleon
Welcome to Medical Discovery News. I’m Dr. Norbert Herzog.
And I’m Dr. David Niesel
Different generations of leaders and soldiers learned the same lesson the hard way. Both Napoleon and Hitler invaded Russia and both armies failed.
We now know from a study that two additional diseases plagued Napoleon’s troops along with hunger, cold, and harassment from Russian troops.
In June of Eighteen twelve, Napolean’s army of over six hundred thousand, Europe’s largest, crossed into Russia. Facing a much smaller Russian army, he believed he’d win in a month.
But the Russians used the Fabian strategy, a scorched earth approach that involved retreating and avoiding large scale battles while destroying resources as they went.
So even while Napoleon captured Moscow, it was abandoned and set ablaze with few supplies and winter coming on.
By the time he retreated in October and crossed into France in December, just one sixth of his army remained. Researchers studying DNA from the remains of those soldiers learned they had suffered from typhus and trench fever, but the methods they used could only identify microbes they specifically looked for.
New recent work used more advanced techniques that could analyze millions of DNA fragments on soldiers’ teeth for a wide array of pathogens simultaneously.
This turned up two new bacteria responsible for decimating Napoleon’s army: one that causes paratyphoid fever and another that causes relapsing fever. Now we have a clearer picture of what happened in one of history’s major chapters.
We are Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog, at UTMB and Quinnipiac University, where biomedical discoveries shape the future of medicine. For much more and our disclaimer go to medicaldiscoverynews.com or subscribe to our podcast.
