#or heterozygous for SE asian ovalocytosis | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

clodiuspulcher · 9 months ago

Text

today im thinking about malaria in ancient rome.

about the fact that P. falciparum (the most dangerous kind of malaria) was likely endemic at least from the 2nd century BC onward that Galen said semitertian fevers (P. falciparum infections) were more common in Rome than anywhere else in the Roman Empire that the most severe manifestations of P. falciparum (quotidian fevers + cerebral malaria) were most common in babies and young children, an epidemiological observation that indicates the transmission rate of P. falciparum was extremely high in Rome that Quintus Serenus said there was no Latin word for semitertian fevers (they used a transliteration of the Greek, 'hemitritaeos') because "no one, i think, could have named it in our language and mothers would not have wanted to"

#working on my thesis gonna bring down the mood of the whole department #but i feel like i have to honor them #and the thing about malaria that fucks me up is P. falciparum has been around for tens of thousands of years #its not a disease of agriculture like smallpox or of sanitary issues that come with civilization like typhoid #it predates agriculture its been found in the bodies of mummies from ancient egypt and skeletons from ancient greece and rome #there are species-specific plasmodium parasites for gorrillas chimpanzees and humans #which to me indicates there was a plasmodium parasite for every now lost hominid #malaria is the strongest recent evolutionary pressure on the human genome #upwards of 30% of people in some parts of the world are heterozygous for sickle cell anemia #or heterozygous for SE asian ovalocytosis #thus it was more evolutionarily advantageous for 2-3% of all children to die #so about 30% of people could be protected from severe malaria #these mutations take a long time to evolve. parasites take a long time to evolve #there are people who mourned their infants tens of thousands of years ago in languages we will never know with rituals we will never see #and i cant do anything about any of that but i can keep going to the lab every day and trying my best to figure it out #because so many generations of humans stretching back to before we were human could not

27 notes · View notes