Vilnius teeth reveal Napoleonic paratyphoid and relapsing fever

Scientists analyzing teeth recovered from a mass grave in Vilnius say they have found genetic evidence of two bacterial infections among French soldiers who died during Napoleon Bonaparte’s retreat from Russia in 1812. In a study published in Current Biology, researchers report fragments of Salmonella enterica, the bacterium that can cause paratyphoid fever, in four of 13 teeth sampled, and Borrelia recurrentis, which causes louseborne relapsing fever, in two teeth. The findings offer new detail on the infectious diseases that afflicted the Grand Armée as it withdrew westward amid bitter cold, hunger and disorder.

The team, led by microbial paleogenomicist Nicolás Rascovan of the Institut Pasteur, used shotgun sequencing to screen for DNA from a wide array of human pathogens rather than testing for individual microbes. That approach detected short, degraded DNA fragments consistent with ancient infections. The researchers report no evidence of Rickettsia prowazekii, the bacterium that causes epidemic typhus, or of Bartonella quintana, which causes trench fever, in the 13 samples they examined.

Contemporary accounts and earlier studies had emphasized typhus as a major killer of...