#medieval-forensic-medicine

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History
fromMedievalists.net
1 day ago

New Medieval Books: Flattening the Medieval Earth - Medievalists.net

The myth of medieval flat earth originated around 1600, contrary to the belief that medieval people thought the Earth was flat.
OMG science
fromwww.theguardian.com
13 hours ago

Baby skeleton wrapped in 1910 newspaper may have lived more than century earlier, inquest hears

A baby boy's remains, dating back to 1910, were found in a Victorian house, suggesting he may have lived between 1726 and 1812.
California
fromLos Angeles Times
4 days ago

Stealing from the dead: Medical Examiner's investigator pleads to theft charge

Adrian Munoz pleaded no contest to stealing a crucifix from a deceased man, receiving jail time and probation as punishment.
History
fromMedievalists.net
5 days ago

12 Strange Magical Beliefs from the Middle Ages - Medievalists.net

Medieval beliefs included magic practices like love potions, storm conjuring, and superstitions surrounding death and health.
DC food
fromTruthout
2 weeks ago

How Maryland's Medical Examiner Helped Conceal Suspicious Deaths

Dr. David Fowler's controversial rulings on deaths in police custody have sparked significant media scrutiny and debate over his use of the excited delirium theory.
History
fromNature
1 week ago

How DNA forensics is transforming studies of ancient manuscripts

Tim Stinson's curiosity about DNA in ancient manuscripts led to the emergence of a new field in manuscript studies.
Medicine
fromwww.independent.co.uk
2 weeks ago

NHS doctor encouraged eunuch maker' to dismember body parts in their basement

An NHS doctor was struck off for encouraging a roommate's illegal body amputations and not reporting his criminal behavior.
#mass-grave
London politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 weeks ago

Dog digs up possible link to notorious 19th-century Devon murder case

A dog in Devon unearthed a bottle linked to a Victorian murder case involving Mary Ann Ashford, who was convicted of poisoning her husband.
Alternative medicine
fromArs Technica
3 weeks ago

Never mind Band-Aids, Neanderthals had antiseptic birch tar

Neanderthals likely used birch tar for medicinal purposes, including treating infections and insect bites, beyond its known use as a weapon adhesive.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 weeks ago

New Medieval Books: Light on Darkness - Medievalists.net

Liturgy is central to Western cultural history, rich in artistic expression and emotional depth, influencing society for over a thousand years.
Boston
fromLos Angeles Times
1 month ago

2 people found dead outside Riverside County courthouse

Two people were found dead near a Riverside County courthouse early Thursday morning with no arrests made and motive unknown.
fromwww.npr.org
2 weeks ago

A skeleton discovered in a Dutch church may belong to musketeer d'Artagnan

The remains of d'Artagnan, a swashbuckling swordsman made famous by French writer Alexandre Dumas' 19th century novel The Three Musketeers, may have been found under the tiles of a church in the Netherlands near the battlefield where he died fighting more than 3 1/2 centuries ago.
History
fromThe Art Newspaper - International art news and events
1 month ago

Mummies and other human remains held in UK museums raise serious ethical questions, warn scholars

The significant number of ancestors held in UK museums is extremely distressing and symbolic of the colonial origins of these collections. We hope that the responses gathered by The Guardian will be shared with the relevant communities to support them in bringing their ancestors home.
London
#death-investigation
Roam Research
fromwww.scientificamerican.com
1 month ago

AI techniques speed up forensic analysis of crucial crime scene larvae

Machine-learning algorithms combined with infrared spectroscopy and chemical profiling enable rapid identification of maggot species and sex without DNA sequencing, improving forensic investigation efficiency.
fromMedievalists.net
2 weeks ago

Who Lies in Winchester's Medieval Mortuary Chests? - Medievalists.net

This project demonstrates the combined power of science, the study of human remains and historical research to discover new information about the six mortuary chests and their occupants which would not have been available to us a generation ago.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 weeks ago

New Medieval Books: Basics of Bloomery Iron Smelting - Medievalists.net

This manuscript is intended to fill the gap between 'the doer and the thinker', and so should be expected to be an overview, especially as applies to the fine details of current archaeology.
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 weeks ago

Scientists Confirm Remains of Medieval Emperor Otto the Great - Medievalists.net

Emperor Otto the Great's identity has been confirmed through scientific research, including DNA analysis, after centuries of uncertainty.
Roam Research
fromArs Technica
1 month ago

How moss helped convict grave robbers of a Chicago cemetery

Cemetery officials were caught grave-robbing after becoming reckless, with moss analysis providing crucial evidence for prosecution.
History
fromMedievalists.net
3 weeks ago

Medieval Knight with Rare Genetic Disorder Identified in Spain - Medievalists.net

A knight with craniosynostosis lived and fought in medieval Spain, identified through remains found at Zorita de los Canes castle.
OMG science
fromNature
1 month ago

Daily briefing: Galileo's notes discovered in the margins of an ancient book

Tectonic plates moved 3.3 billion years ago with higher oxygen levels; Galileo's annotations discovered in 400-year-old Ptolemy text; rotator cuff degeneration common in older adults regardless of symptoms.
fromMail Online
1 month ago

Key Bible detail about Jesus' crucifixion confirmed after 2,000 years

According to the Gospel of John, Roman soldiers broke the legs of the two men executed alongside Jesus to hasten their deaths. But when they came to Jesus, they did not break his legs because they saw he was already dead. This detail has long intrigued historians and doctors because crucifixion victims often survived for many hours, and sometimes days.
Medicine
Science
fromwww.npr.org
1 month ago

Unlocking the secrets of an ancient plague

A single strain of Yersinia Pestis bacteria killed hundreds of people in 7th-century Jerash within days, revealing the rapid spread and lethality of the Plague of Justinian pandemic.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Italian ambulance driver investigated on suspicion of murdering five patients

All the suspicious deaths occurred while or soon after the patients were transported in an ambulance driven by the 27-year-old man, lawyers of the victims told the Guardian. Investigative sources told the ANSA state news agency they believe the man, who worked for the Italian Red Cross but has now been suspended, may have administered harmful substances to the patients during transfers between hospitals and care homes in the Emilia-Romagna region.
Medicine
#archimedes-palimpsest
History
fromMedievalists.net
3 weeks ago

Medieval Chess Reveals a More Diverse Middle Ages, Study Finds - Medievalists.net

Medieval chess functioned as a rare intellectual arena where people from different cultures and races engaged as equals, challenging assumptions about rigid medieval social hierarchies.
Medicine
fromArs Technica
1 month ago

What we can learn from scientific analysis of Renaissance recipes

16th-century people used scientific experimentation to create personalized home remedies, leaving protein traces on medical manuals that researchers now analyze to understand Renaissance knowledge construction.
Miscellaneous
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Mafia accused of using Naples hospital for fraud and illegal transport of corpses

Italian police arrested four people for a Camorra plot to commit insurance fraud, control hospital services, and illegally transport corpses through infiltration of Naples hospital staff.
History
fromMedievalists.net
4 weeks ago

Two Medieval Men Found Buried in Prehistoric Site - Medievalists.net

Medieval men were buried in the Menga dolmen, a Neolithic monument in Spain, over 4,000 years after its construction, demonstrating the site's enduring symbolic importance across millennia.
US news
fromwww.mercurynews.com
1 month ago

More human remains found in Oakland

Dismembered lower limbs were found in Oakland's Fruitvale; authorities are testing to determine identity, cause of death, and links to earlier remains discovered Feb. 1.
fromwww.mercurynews.com
2 months ago

Renee Good's family releases partial independent autopsy results

The four bullets Renee Good took from the gun fired by Minnesota ICE officer Jonathan Ross hit her once each in the arm, breast and head, while a fourth grazed her body, her family said in releasing partial results of an independent autopsy on the slain mother of three. A highly respected and credentialed medical pathologist performed the procedure, said
US politics
#brooklyn
fromIndependent
1 month ago

Post-mortem service in 'crisis', causing delays to funerals of more than a week

Grieving families are increasingly having to delay burying relatives because of hold-ups in carrying out post-mortems in multiple counties. The post-mortems, ordered by coroners to find cause of death, are resulting in funerals taking place later than wished, with delays of several days or more than a week in some parts of the country, adding to the distress of the bereaved.
UK news
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: Approaching Records of the Household and Wardrobe - Medievalists.net

The Household and Wardrobe Accounts are English records that document the daily needs of the king and his family. This book serves as a guide to these sources, showing how they can be used and what valuable insights they offer into medieval government.
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: Widow City - Medievalists.net

Late medieval Italian widows mourned their spouses and navigated their lives through religious or secular paths, evolving from allegorical subjects to prominent authors who reshaped public discourse on widowed identity.
fromSFGATE
2 months ago

Body found halfway across country ties back to horrific Calif. criminal

Ronald Joseph Cole was a 19-year-old with a shy smile and a buzz cut in 1965, the year he moved from San Diego to Fillmore, a town about 25 miles from Santa Clarita. He was just starting out in life and, hoping to find a job, moved in with his older half-brother David LaFever. By May 1965, Cole had stopped contacting relatives. He had disappeared.
US politics
fromwww.mediaite.com
2 months ago

BREAKING: Medical Examiner Officially Determines Alex Pretti's Death Was a Homicide

Hennepin County medical examiner ruled Alex Pretti's January shooting death a homicide after video contradicted federal agents' claims and identified two agents as shooters.
US news
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Accused US grave robber allegedly admits he sold human remains online

Jonathan Gerlach allegedly stole over 100 human remains from Mount Moriah cemetery and admitted to selling some of them online.
fromwww.scientificamerican.com
2 months ago

The search for Leonardo da Vinci's DNAhow modern forensic science is trying to crack a 500-year-old puzzle

About ten years ago researchers across a wide range of disciplines, from forensic science and genetics to art history, got together with the goal of finding the Renaissance artist's DNA. Da Vinci had no children, and his remains were disturbed during the French Revolution. The hope is that uncovering his DNA could open the door to a number of discoveries, including new tools for authenticating artwork and potential clues about da Vinci's uncanny way of seeing the world.
Science
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

Did Medieval People Have Bad Teeth and Bad Breath? - Medievalists.net

Medieval people actively maintained oral hygiene and were concerned about dental health, contrary to the stereotype of universal tooth decay and foul breath.
Miscellaneous
fromwww.bbc.com
2 months ago

'Cold blooded' murder was well planned, court told

Four men are accused of planning the 2020 Telford assassination of rapper Tamba Momodu (Teerose); three deny murder, one pleaded guilty to arson.
fromenglish.elpais.com
2 months ago

How beer helped change the history of modern surgery

It might sound like an exaggeration, but it's not: beer played an indirect but crucial role in the birth of modern surgery. Not because it held the key to cures, nor because anyone drank it in an operating room, but because it was one of the first products in which science observed something previously invisible. That something germs would forever change how we understand fermentation, food and also human infections.
Science
Medicine
fromwww.npr.org
1 month ago

That ain't perfume! Ancient bottle contained feces, likely used for medicine

Chemical analysis of ancient Roman vessels confirmed a two-millennium-old medicinal recipe by Galen combining human feces and fragrant materials.
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: Silence of the Gods - Medievalists.net

Europe's last pagan peoples underwent Christian conversion from the 14th to 20th centuries while maintaining their indigenous religious traditions despite political pressure to adopt Christianity.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Reading in Byzantium: Literacy, Books, and a World of Texts - Medievalists.net

Byzantine reading was communal and performative, woven into religious, educational, and administrative life while preserving classical learning within a Christian intellectual framework.
#medieval-medicine
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: The Medieval Moon - Medievalists.net

In this book of moons, I am writing for people for whom the medieval world and its literatures and arts may be unfamiliar. I hope that in telling the stories of medieval moons, I also introduce these readers to the wonderful, mesmerising realm of medieval texts and images. But I also hope that this book may be useful to those with greater familiarity with medieval languages, literatures, and arts.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: Interconnected Traditions - Medievalists.net

This open-access book brings together more than thirty essays on languages and the ways they develop, interact, and influence one another. Its main focus is the Middle East, where Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic long existed side by side and often overlapped in everyday use, scholarship, and culture. In line with Geoffrey (Khan)'s commitment to the maximally accessible dissemination of research, this Festschrift has been published in both open-access digital editions and affordable printed formats.
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Previously Unknown Medieval Chronicle Discovered - Medievalists.net

A previously unknown 8th-century Maronite chronicle (dated 712–13 CE) offers early Christian perspective on Arab-Islamic expansion and Late Antique religious-political change.
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Rules of a Medieval Library - Medievalists.net

When universities began to emerge in Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they soon became important centres of knowledge. Their libraries could hold hundreds of books, and many of the most valuable volumes were kept under close control - sometimes even chained to desks. We have few details about how medieval university libraries operated, but a revealing set of rubric headings survives from the University of Angers in western France.
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Military Education in Early Medieval Europe: Learning from Books - Medievalists.net

Early medieval military leaders learned warfare from books—Roman manuals, handbooks, and case studies—informing campaigns, sieges, and logistical planning.
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: The Forsaken 14th Century - Medievalists.net

In this volume, the authors aim to provide a truly global overview of the 14 century, with each region given approximately the same space. It is obviously impossible to cover every event in every country of the world in a single volume, just as you would not be able to visit every city in every country if you traveled around the world for a year.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript - Medievalists.net

This is a book about a book: the small, cropped, somewhat ragged but brightly illustrated volume now known formally, and rather forbiddingly, as British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x/2. The fame and beauty of its four Middle English poems have given it sobriquets beyond the shelfmark, however, which are more familiar and intimate: it is also the Gawain-Manuscript or, as I will call it, the Pearl-Manuscript.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: A Demon Spirit - Medievalists.net

Abū Nuwās's poetry is sheer joy: it never fails to delight, surprise, and excite. His diwan, his collected poems, encompasses the principal early Abbasid poetic genres: panegyrics ( madīḥ), renunciant poems ( zuhdiyyāt), lampoons ( hijāʾ), hunting poems ( ṭardiyyāt), wine poems ( khamriyyāt), love poems ( ghazaliyyāt) to males ( mudhakkarāt) and females ( muʾannathāt), and transgressive verse ( mujūn).
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: A Crusade Against the Turks as a Means of Reforming the Church - Medievalists.net

This project will focus on the Camaldolese hermits' proposal for achieving what they considered to be the most crucial task in the repair of the church, eliminating Islam and all Muslims. Our study will begin with an examination of the recipient of the Libellus, Giovanni de' Medici, who would become Pope Leo X. Next will be an exploration into the backgrounds of Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Querini,
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

10 Medieval Studies' Articles Published Last Month - Medievalists.net

In this paper we investigate whether infant and childhood feeding practices influenced the imbalanced adult sex ratio reported in medieval Europe from historical and osteological evidence. First, we examine hypotheses for the observed imbalanced sex ratios in Europe and the evidence presented to support these hypotheses. We then use stable isotope analysis (δ13C and δ15N) of incremental dentine in 64 first molars from adults at three medieval sites (Aulla, Badia Pozzeveri, and Montescudaio) in north-western Tuscany (11th-15th c. CE).
History
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

New Medieval Books: The Horse in History - Medievalists.net

Eleven studies examine horse equipment, training, folklore, and material culture across time and Europe, emphasizing archaeological evidence and diverse methodological approaches.
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: Ipomedon - Medievalists.net

A twelfth-century Anglo-French romance about Ipomedon, an incognito prince tested by adventures, tournaments, and ironic narration exploring chivalry, humour, and social values.
History
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

New Medieval Books: Celtic Magic - Medievalists.net

Ancient and medieval Celtic-speaking peoples maintained distinctive magical beliefs and practices whose evidence appears in inscriptions, classical accounts, medieval manuscripts, charms, and medical recipes.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Medieval Maps of Britain - Medievalists.net

Medieval cartography depicted Britain variably, evolving from vague island outlines to clearer, labeled representations showing towns, provinces, and classical influences.
History
fromMedievalists.net
2 months ago

Over 32,000 medieval manuscripts transcribed in four months using AI - Medievalists.net

Automated transcriptions of 32,763 medieval manuscripts were produced in four months using a standardized, machine-learning-trained corpus to enable large-scale searchable manuscript analysis.
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

Online Course: Medieval Gender and Sexuality - Medievalists.net

Eleanor Janega is one of the most well-known historians of the Middle Ages, widely recognised as the host and co-creator of several history series on HistoryHit TV and the podcast Going Medieval. She is also a prolific writer and public educator, bringing medieval history to a broad audience through her engaging books, articles, and media appearances. With a keen focus on medieval society, gender, and power structures, Janega challenges popular misconceptions and makes the past accessible with wit and scholarly depth.
History
History
fromWorld History Encyclopedia
2 months ago

Medicine in Ancient Mesopotamia: A Gift of the Gods to Their People

Gula, the Sumerian goddess of healing, guided Mesopotamian physicians whose specialized, long-trained practice combined divine attribution of illness with practical medical roles.
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