Ancient hearts had modern-day diseases (and they didn’t even have McDonalds)

Historians and scientists are often in the dark about what medical issues humans in the past faced. Did they have cancer? The flu? Was the Plague of Athens in 430 BCE smallpox, typhus, or an illness that simply evolved away before modern times?

Happily, scientists have now gained a new snapshot into historical human health by examining 400-year-old preserved hearts.

The research, which was presented December 2 at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, focused on recently uncovered graves in Rennes, France. The graves were a part of the basement of the Convent of the Jacobins—dating back to the late 16th or early 17th century—and contained burial vaults of several elite-class families.

Included in the items discovered were five heart-shaped lead urns, each of which contained a human heart preserved in embalming fluids.

A research team from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research—including radiologists, forensic physicians, archeologists, pathologic physicians, and physicists—then began to investigate the hearts.

They started with MRI and CT scans of each heart, but this initially yielded little information, thanks to the fluids involved in preserving the hearts.

“We tried to see if we could get health information from the hearts in their embalmed state, but the embalming material made it difficult,” said study author Fatima-Zohra Mokrane, M.D., radiologist at Rangueil Hospital at the University Hospital of Toulouse in France, in a statement. “We needed to take necessary precautions to conduct the research carefully in order to get all possible information.”

When these scans didn’t pan out, the researchers moved on to more invasive steps. They cleaned the hearts carefully, removing the embalming material, and retook the MRIs and CTs. The researchers then were able to recognize various heart structures, like the chambers and valves. Following this, the hearts was rehydrated, rescanned, and examined using more traditional techniques: dissection, external study, and histology.

Of the five lonely hearts, one was seemed to be perfectly healthy. Three hearts showed signs of heart disease—as plaque was found on the coronary arteries. The last heart had been too poorly preserved to be studied.

Ancient hearts, modern-day heart conditions

“Since four of the five hearts were very well preserved, we were able to see signs of present-day heart conditions, such as plaque and atherosclerosis,” said Mokrane.

Besides confirming that heart disease was a problem even 400 years ago, long before the advent of McDonald’s, the researchers made a, well, heartwarming discovery. (Sorry.)

One of the hearts, which was eventually identified as having belonged to Toussaint Perrien, Knight of Brefeillac, was not resting with his own body, but with that of his wife, Louise de Quengo, Lady of Brefeillac.

“It was common during that time period to be buried with the heart of a husband or wife,” explained Mokrane. “This was the case with one of our hearts. It’s a very romantic aspect to the burials.”

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Feature Image: Rozenn Colleter, Ph.D./INRAP