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Why were medieval monks so susceptible to intestinal worms?
- senectus1 4y ago>Why such a high prevalence of roundworm and whipworm infections? The scientists speculate that the monks may have picked up the parasites when putting feces to work as a fertilizer, either by emptying their own latrines to manure crops, or by bringing in outside fertilizer contaminated by parasites in human or pig excrement. These hands-on practices were definitely used in Medieval and Roman times, just as they are today in parts of the world where other fertilizer options are scarce.
- wumpus 4y agoThere are lots of places today in the 3rd world where you shouldn't eat uncooked food (salad).
- Cerium 4y agoNo need to go to the 3rd world - there are plenty of places where eating raw lettuce is a bad idea. I went to a lecture once that went into detail on the lengths that the USA goes to to ensure our lettuce is safe to eat. The conclusion was that stuck with me was that the first time your lettuce leaves refrigeration is on the drive home, the speaker suggested that you bring a cooler in the trunk of your car to ensure proper cold chain management for leafy green purchases. You can see some of the considerations in "Commodity Specific Food Safety Guidelines for the Lettuce and Leafy Greens Supply Chain" [1] [1] https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/Commodity-Specific-Food-Safety-Guidelines-for-the-Lettuce-and-Leafy-Greens-Supply-Chain-1st-Edition-%28PDF%29.pdf https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/Commodity-Specific-...
- samarthr1 4y agoHere in India, the leafy greens are eaten very fresh, usually on the day of the harvest. And, we don't usually buy greens from the supermarket where chikitshadhina even have a chance of maintainance, rather, we prefer to buy from Street side vendors.
- em500 4y agoIndeed. Directly from the CDC[1]: > Sometimes, raw fruits and vegetables contain harmful germs that can make you and your family sick, such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria. CDC estimates that germs on fresh produce cause a large percentage of foodborne illnesses in the United States. The safest produce to eat is cooked; the next safest is washed. How large of a percentage? About 45.9% of US food poisoning in the US is attributed to produce (of which 11.7% fruit-nuts, 34.2% vegetables), vs 47.8% to animals (of which 6.1% seafood, 13.8% dairy, 6.0% eggs, 22.0% meat-poultry)[2]. I suspect there's quite a bit of risk-compensating behavior at work here. We tend to hear a lot more about the dangers of raw meat, eggs and seafood than of raw vegetables, which probably makes people much more wary about them. [2] https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/3/11-1866-t1 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/3/11-1866-t1 [1] https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/steps-healthy-fruits-veggies.html https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/steps-healthy-f...
- bluGill 4y agoI work for John Deere. One of my coworkers went to learn about lettuce production in the real world. He was in the field wearing gloves and a hair net for safety, and they were taking heads of lettuce off the plant and putting them directly into the plastic bag it would be sold from in the store. Then he looked up: wild birds were flying all over, and like bird do dropping poop behind. His conclusion: wash your lettuce. (none of the above speaks for the company of course)
- deepdriver 4y agoAre there effective best-practices to sanitize human waste for manuring? I’ve skimmed the “Humanure Handbook” which suggests a combination of composting (aerobic decomposition) and time (about one year). Are quicker and more energy-intensive options, like charring, equally effective at sanitization without removing plant nutrition?
- Baeocystin 4y agoBest practices are that you really shouldn't. The potential value of human waste as an additive to growing food is (vastly) overwhelmed by the potential for pathogen spread, pharmaceutical pollution, the whole nine yards. The longest-running project I'm aware of is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite , which is similar to what you are asking, if you want to go for a deeper dive in the subject.
- deepdriver 4y agoThanks! Had never heard of Milorganite. My interest is purely one of curiosity, specifically how waste might be recycled in a Mars or Moon colony. The Chinese regenerative life support project Lunar Palace 1 claims 41% nitrogen recapture from solid waste, using a "bioreactor" i.e. flippable compost bin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuegong-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuegong-1 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27912029/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27912029/ It's unclear from the published results whether the crew ate food grown from this compost, or just measured the output's nitrogen content.
- actionfromafar 4y agoIn Sweden "milorganite" like processes are as far as I know fairly common, but there is controversy around heavy metal and antibiotics content.
- kuhewa 4y agoMunicipal sewage is pretty commonly added to green waste compost products, in an industrial facility the temperature can be brought up pretty high quickly so I don't reckon the process is more time consuming than processing any the green waste itself
- bilegeek 4y agoGiven how often animal manure was used as fuel for fires in the past, I'm surprised that most people didn't pre-burn their dried feces before using it as fertilizer. I get why - it's too much extra work - but I would've figured it would be seen as worth it; provides fuel for fires, removes the stench, and makes it easier to spread on the crops. (I know they weren't aware of germ theory, but even then I figured they would see advantages.)
- deepdriver 4y agoWould combustion affect poop’s fertilizing qualities, or spread bad stuff around in the steam and smoke?
- masklinn 4y agoAssuming the point is mostly nitrates and minerals, I don’t think they would be would be much affected, though the aggregation properties of the manure may be? On the other hand, combustion could also help with destroying the antibiotics found in the manure, which spread to the soil and accumulate in produce.
- masklinn 4y ago(Obviously that’s a modern manure issue, not historical).
- deepdriver 4y agoDid some searching, looks like pyrolysis can convert waste into biochar in way that eliminates pathogens: https://www.susana.org/_resources/documents/default/2-1832-2-1624-von-herzen.pdf https://www.susana.org/_resources/documents/default/2-1832-2... >Complete elimination of pathogens from Human Solid Waste (HSW) is a priority of our biochar reactor. By heating an appropriate flow of input material to high temperatures above 450 C for about 15 minutes, the material thoroughly chars, causing a 100% elimination of pathogens. Doesn't say anything about heavy metals or pharmaceuticals. In particular I don't know whether heat can denature or destroy birth control hormones like ethinylestradiol. If it's suspended in water, it can be removed through a reverse osmosis or activated charcoal filter. Maybe leaching before charring and filtering the runoff would help? Dunno.
- drc500free 4y ago11/19 vs 8/25 gives p=.09 for a two-tailed test, I think. Is that really worth publishing?
- isoprophlex 4y agoYes. Two tailed test gives p=0.0854 Do enough random microscopy on enough cemetaries and you have a tale to tell every time. I'm not really convinced there's an actual story here.
- pacaro 4y agoThe low sample sizes jumped out at me too. The article is low quality in plenty of other ways too.
- kuhewa 4y agoYou have to look at it in the context of the field, ~25-30 ish grave soil samples under fairly controlled conditions (e.g., burials in each group within about a km of each other, control soil samples taken from each grave, similar time period) ain't bad for paleo-helminthology. Sure, it leaves uncertainty in terms of conclusions but 'low quality' is a bit much.
- pacaro 4y agoLate response. I'm inclined to believe that the original paper, and the work done by the archeologists etc. is of the highest standard. The article itself was quite poorly written
- kuhewa 4y agoBarnard's test gave p < 0.05. But sure, do enough fine-scale examination of Medieval graves and you will find something interesting. That's kinda the point of archaeology/anthropology.
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- jokethrowaway 4y agoMy gut feeling (pun intended) is that the manure theory makes sense and lower ranked monks were just more likely to rotate across all tasks needed in the friary, as opposed to peasants who specialised in a single activity (farmer, carpenter, quest NPCs, etc)
- charles_f 4y agoWhile this is very interesting, sample size and variance is too small to be of significance. A less click-baity title would have been "why were medieval people so susceptible to worms"
- ravel-bar-foo 4y agoThe headline also over-generalizes the results: perhaps using human excement as fertilizer was more common at Cambridge, but the study did not look at other monasteries (or other Medieval time frames). I wonder whether there is a reason to expect that farming practices were shared between monasteries.
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- last_responder 4y agoIt is hard for me to fathom that this article was written around such insignificant numbers . 11/19 Monks 8/25 Commoners One bad meal could swing those numbers and adding to that the monks were more communal than individual families so more likely to affect them all.
- charles_f 4y agoYeah exactly, especially when coming to diseases, locality has more to do with propagation than the type pf hole you are shitting
- hyperboreanChad 4y ago
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- radicaldreamer 4y agoNorth Korean soldiers apparently also have parasitic infections, probably also from human derived fertilizer use or poor sanitation. https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/22/health/north-korea-defector-parasites-health/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/22/health/north-korea-defector-p...
- tragomaskhalos 4y agoFinding worms in your excrement is pretty distressing in modern times even with cause and treatment clearly understood, it must have been vastly more so when the only aetiology was based on the cockamamie humours model, and treatments were so haphazard. The same is true for many other diseases of course, but there is something especially and viscerally repulsive about worm parasites.
- Sharlin 4y agoI wonder how repulsive it actually was to people 1000 or 5000 or 10000 years ago though. In the wild – especially in the tropics – intestinal parasites are incredibly common in mammals, presumably including our ancestors. The invention of cooking must have reduced the parasitic load among hominins, however, as well as the discovery of soap. Various cultural taboos on eating or handling specific types of animals almost certainly originate from the desire to avoid parasites as well. Also, base parasitic load is reduced for people living in cooler climates, so worm infections may have become more yucky to Europeans not as accustomed to them.
- cplusplusfellow 4y agoThese days, despite soap and cooking capabilities, we are doing our best to reintroduce the occurrences by everyone out here licking their partners anus.
- hutzlibu 4y ago"by everyone out here licking their partners anus." Projecting much?
- irrational 4y agoAnd by everyone, I mean me.
- cplusplusfellow 4y ago
- lazyjones 4y agoI'm actually surprised that parasitic infection rate with native parasites (where humans aren't an accidental host) was so low at 30% or less. That would mean the existing treatments were rather effective. Just for comparison, https://www.africaontheblog.org/one-billion-1000000000-neglected-people/ https://www.africaontheblog.org/one-billion-1000000000-negle... claims that half the world's population hosts at least one species of worms.
- jiggywiggy 4y agoThe article hardly dives into the why. There could be many more reasons, for instance just the fact of being more grouped together then villagers next to them. Even though they had better sanitization they didn't have access to modern cleaning technology and also not the awareness of it's importance. A shithole might be more sanitary than a group toilet if less are using it.
- thematrixturtle 4y agoThis doesn't really answer its own question though. Using human feces as fertilizer is a plausible method of transmission, but if the monks were doing this, surely the villagers were doing it too? Or is the difference that monks were communal and thus more likely to ingest each other's feces, while the, uhh, blast radius would be smaller for a single-family household?
- dreen 4y agoMy suspicion is that villagers kept farm animals and mostly used their feces, while monks did not and utilised their own
- rabite 4y agoIntestinal parasites are a sexually transmitted disease. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19653954/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19653954/ It's possible that some men who sought out a life of close confinement with other men might have a proclivity for behaviors which might result in parasite transmission.
- londons_explore 4y agoAll it takes is one "If you are truly devoted, you'll eat this shit" and everyone gets worms... In a monastery I wouldn't be surprised for such odd things to happen... It must be a pretty isolated life when all the praying is done, and isolated populations pick up weird habits...
- londons_explore 4y agoThe route of infection for most intestinal worms is: > Worm in intestine > Eggs deposited near butthole > Causes an itchy arse, which people itch > Eggs on fingers. Eggs are sticky and not easily washed. > Fingers touch food being prepared. > People eat food. I suspect therefore that communal food preparation (ie. one person prepares everyone's food, perhaps on a rota) is the main cause of this.
- beeforpork 4y agoThanks for the clarification of how this works! :-)
- refurb 4y agoThat one route of infection, most typically pin worms. Intestinal worms can transmitted a number of different ways, but it's commonly the oral-fecal contamination route where feces comes in contact with food (when feces are used as fertilizer) or water (poor waste management) which is consumed. However, hookworm larva can penetrate intact skin. Step in a puddle with bare (or exposed feet) and you can get infected.
- kuhewa 4y ago> hookworm larva can penetrate intact skin typically confined to the dermis though and don't penetrate to the gut to complete the lifecycle. Luckily
- wrp 4y agoI've read that intestinal worms were nearly universal in post-WW2 Japan due to use of human feces in vegetable farming. I would guess that to be the most obvious explanation anywhere.
- refurb 4y agoMove to SE Asia and they are still quite common. It's pretty usual to "deworm" yourself with medicine 1 or 2 per year. But I did a bit more reading on it and apparently infection rates are dropping fast and most cases are in rural areas. If you live in city, the infection numbers are pretty low.
- fred_is_fred 4y agoIn the US we only deworm ourselves during viral outbreaks.
- saalweachter 4y agoFor anyone curious, the (modern) guideline for humanure is to let it sit/compost for two years before using it, for the purpose of letting any parasites in it die. This is compared to 3-6 months for eg chicken manure (which is primarily, IIRC, about "mellowing" the fertilizer ie letting it undergo some chemical changes).
- akdor1154 4y agoI have a delicious and baseless armchair theory that intestinal worms served as a great way to distribute gut bacteria among a close-sleeping community of humans.
- ginko 4y agoMy guess would be that monks ate a lot of meat and other varied food than the average medieval peasant.
- bregma 4y agoMy theory is that the middens in medieval stone monasteries were better preserved and easier to analyze than the temporary mobile outhouse holes of yer typical villein. It's not that monks were more susceptible to parasites, but that their intestinal evidence was more available to researchers.
- kuhewa 4y agoThis is the most parsimonious explanation to me as well, unless there is a way to groundtruth egg preservation in each location, it seems quite likely that the proportion of eggs surviving 600-800 years will vary between locations.
- bluGill 4y agoThis was an analysis of graves though, what individual people died with. I have no idea how or if burial rights were different for monks vs regular people. (both were probably christian, though there could well have been small differences which may or may not be significant.
- kuhewa 4y agoCan't edit previous comment but - I tracked down the actual study, the soil was indeed from graves (right under the sacrum where the bowels were) and was compared to control samples by the head or feet of the grave. The friars were buried with clothes, the laypeople in shrouds so similar deal and the sites were a few hundred meters apart so about as well controlled as you could expect, I reckon.
- al2o3cr 4y agoWhat would you expect, they had a Diet of Worms! :P
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- stormdennis 4y agoPhones should be excluded from restaurants being almost all positive for ecoli. Where that lurks worm eggs could too.
- tvhahn 4y agoI got an intestinal parasite (Ascaris -https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/ascariasis/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/ascariasis/index.html) while in University here in Canada. I was minding my business one day, I looked down into the toilet water, and there was a little wormy in my stool. I fished it out and went the ER. The doctor was fascinated cause I don't think they see this so often. Who knows where I picked it up. The most likely culprit was the dorm cafeteria I was living in. With the open salad bars and the sharing of serving utensils, it is an ideal location to spread some fecal. Suffice to say, I now avoid salad bars.
- InCityDreams 4y agoAlso to be avoided: Piss-chips - ie shared bar food/ snacks.
- nerdponx 4y agoAs far as I know, you can get some parasites (not sure about Ascaris specifically) just from walking around barefoot. I know they aren't really that dangerous unless you have a really high worm load, or you're unlucky and one ends up in a part of your body where it doesn't normally live, but their lifecycle is thoroughly disgusting and terrifying. Definitely something I've stayed up at night freaking out about at a few points in my life.
- sureglymop 4y agoIf that's the case, what about swimming in a river or lake?
- kuhewa 4y agoNo. the larvae that would infect humans aren't competent swimmers. If you are a little zooplankton predator like a copepod, there would be little L2 stage roundworm larvae of various species whipping about (after having hatched from eggs that came out of a larger predator's gut) trying to attract attention and get eaten so they could continue the lifecycle (often, they'd need to get eaten by at least one larger predator to mature). There are Ascaris-like worms in water that can affect humans, see: Anisakis. But you wouldn't get infected by larvae in the environment, you'd have to eat undercooked fish that ate the zooplankton that ate the L2 worms and get infected through the gut once they are L3 stage. Ah - Dracunculus aka guinea worm is a another you could get from water, but you'd need to actually drink the copepods.
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- dsign 4y agoThe Dune-sized worm in the room is how the religion of these friars assesses these findings? Why is it important? Because they coded the moral and cultural foundation of the Western world. How could they be right regarding, say, whom you should marry (or the fact that you should marry at all with just a single person of your opposite sex), but be clueless regarding intestinal worms? Furthermore, how could they keep the pretense?
- pfdietz 4y agoAfter Martin Luther, it was doubtlessly a consequence of the Diet of Worms.
- beloch 4y agoMy first thought was diet. Monastic orders typically progressed from austere origins towards outright decadence when compared to normal folk. Monks could have been eating all manner of unhealthy foods (e.g. Mett in Poland and Germany) that other people seldom or never ate. Using poop as fertilizer is certainly a vector for parasites, but one that people outside of monastic orders were also subject to.
- Cupertino95014 4y agoApparently they weren't up on state-of-the-art medieval medical techniques: drawing a pint of blood would have fixed their humors right up.
- elzbardico 4y agoThe sample size is so small that I wonder how can they be so sure of their conclusions. Anyway, at least the title here is an overly broad generalization that can’t be supported by this research.
- todd8 4y agoA good book on parasites that I can recommend for the general reader is Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures by Carl Zimmer [1]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/074320011X/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tpbk_p1_i5 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/074320011X/ref=dbs_a_def_r...