Possible Case of Glanders in a Late-Nineteenth- or Early-Twentieth- Century Mennonite Woman in Manitoba, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article uses bioarchaeological and biocultural analyses to explore the life history and health status of an older Mennonite woman recovered from an unmarked grave in southeastern Manitoba, dated to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Much of the woman’s skeleton exhibits a number of pathological conditions, including periosteal new bone formation in the lower limbs, healed cranial lesions of the posterior parietals, and lytic lesions in subchondral bone of the elbows, knees, and ankles. In those of the ankles, cloacae exit the metaphyseal bone rather than into the joint capsule. By incorporating macroscopic and radiographic observations, bone histology, and the medical literature, this study differentiates between the main disease contenders responsible for these bone lesions: tuberculosis, syphilis, and glanders (a zoonotic disease of horses). Given the culturally prescribed construction of housebarns, which placed Mennonite women at substantial risk for zoonotic disease exposure, and the historic documentation of severe glanders outbreaks in southeastern Manitoba, this study concludes that glanders is the most plausible diagnosis for the observed skeletal lesions. This is, to our knowledge, the first archaeological demonstration of this disease. Cet article utilise des analyses bioarchéologiques et bioculturelles pour explorer le cycle de vie et l’état de santé d’une femme Mennonite âgée du sud-est du Manitoba datant de la fin du XIXe ou du début du XXe siècle; l’enterrement récupéré d’un cimetière non marqué d’une communauté abandonnée. L’affiliation est établie à partir du lieu d’inhumation et de la tenue vestimentaire, de la construction du cercueil et des sources documentaires.Une grande partie du squelette présentait une nouvelle formation osseuse sous-périostée, principalement dans les membres inférieurs. De plus, il y avait des lésions crâniennes cicatrisées sur les pariétaux postérieurs et des lésions lytiques dans l’os sous-chondral des genoux et des chevilles avec des cloacae sortant de l’os métaphysaire plutôt que dans la capsule articulaire.L’étude intègre des observations macroscopiques et radiographiques, l’histologie osseuse, et la littérature médicale pour différencier les principaux candidats: la tuberculose, la syphilis, et la morve (une maladie zoonotique des chevaux). La construction des granges-maisons prescrite par la culture a exposé les femmes Mennonites à un risque substantiel d’exposition aux maladies zoonotiques, tandis que la documentation historique des épidémies de morve sévères étaye davantage notre diagnostic des lésions squelettiques observées comme les plus plausibles. Il s’agit, à notre connaissance, de la première démonstration archéologique de morve.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".