US EditionDNA From Napoleon's Ill-Fated 1812 Army Reveals What Likely Led to the Soldiers' Demise
- On October 24, geneticist Nicolás Rascovan of the Institut Pasteur reported in Current Biology that ancient DNA from Napoleonic soldiers' teeth revealed two fever-causing bacteria.
- In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte led a disastrous campaign into Moscow with 615,000 men, but only about 110,000 survived due to cold, hunger and disease.
- After extracting and sequencing DNA from 13 soldiers' teeth, the team detected Salmonella enterica in four soldiers and Borrelia recurrentis in two, pathogens causing paratyphoid and relapsing fever.
- The study challenges earlier PCR-based findings that linked typhus to the remains, finding no trace of Rickettsia prowazekii and discounting previous identifications of Bartonella quintana.
- Researchers say the finding helps trace pathogen evolution, although Rascovan cautioned the study sampled a tiny fraction of casualties and cannot determine infection prevalence.
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What Really Doomed Napoleon’s Army? Scientists Find New Clues in DNA
Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that were exhumed from their graves, worked scatological miracles, and drew inspiration from X-rays.First, a diagnosis 200 years in the making confirms, once again, that Napoleon’s retreat from Russia was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad time. Then: crystal pee, life-giving poo, and the artistic side of radiotherapy. As always, for more of my work, check out my new book First C…
A team of scientists has identified two unexpected pathogens known to cause typhoid fever and recurrent fever in the remains of former soldiers of Napoleon's army who retired from Russia in 1812.In the summer of that year, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte led about half a million soldiers to invade the Russian Empire.However, in December only a fraction of the army survived.Historical records suggest that hunger, cold and typhus caused their di…
der Standard AT
der Standard DEIn addition to cold and hunger, typhus has been regarded as the cause of death for French soldiers. However, a new study shows two other diseases.
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