The reasons you have eyelashes

I had always assumed that eyelashes evolved simply to keep particulate matter out of the eyes. Now a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface reports that particulates are only half the story; eyelashes also divert airflow to prevent drying of the eyes.

Through anatomical measurements, we find that 22 species of mammals possess eyelashes of a length one-third the eye width. Wind tunnel experiments confirm that this optimal eyelash length reduces both deposition of airborne particles and evaporation of the tear film by a factor of two. Using scaling theory, we find this optimum arises because of the incoming flow's interactions with both the eye and eyelashes.

And this bit from the introduction was an interesting TYWK:

One study found that growth of eyelashes occurs in response to exposure to allergens. Children with allergies have 10% longer and denser lashes than those without allergies. This response arises from allergens triggering mast cells within the inside of the eyelid to release prostaglandins that promote hair growth, which presumably protects the eye.

More at the link, with additional discussion at the L.A. Times, via The Presurfer.

Previously on TYWKIWDBI:
Poliosis, and
Elizabeth Taylor's distichiasis (top photo).

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This skull was extensively trepanned. For scruples.

Explained at io9:

Researchers at the University of Pisa, Italy, have solved a longstanding mystery around the honeycombed skull of one of the Italian martyrs beheaded by 15th century Ottoman Turk invaders when they refused to give up their Christian faith...

The skull was later drilled, most likely to obtain bone powder to treat diseases such as paralysis, stroke, and epilepsy, which were believed to arise from magical or demonic influences...

"The perfectly cupped shape of the incomplete perforations leads(us) to hypothesize the use of a particular type of trepan, with semi-lunar shaped blade or rounded bit; a tool of this type could not produce bone discs, but only bone powder," Fornaciari said...

This would make the Otranto skull a unique piece of evidence supporting historical accounts on the use of skull bone powder as an ingredient in pharmacological preparations...

Indeed, in his Pharmacopée universelle, a comprehensive work on pharmaceutical composition, French chemist Nicolas Lémery (1645 –1715) detailed how powdered human skull drunk in water was effective to treat "paralysis, stroke, epilepsy and other illness of the brain."

"The dose is from half scruple up to two scruples," Lémery wrote.

"The skull of a person who died of violent and sudden death is better than that of a man who died of a long illness or who had been taken from a cemetery: the former has held almost all of his spirits, which in the latter they have been consumed, either by illness or by the earth," he added.

Yes, I had to look it up too:

Scruple: a unit of apothecary weight, with symbol ℈. It is a twenty-fourth part of an ounce, or 20 grains, or approximately 1.3 grams. More generally, any small quantity might be called a scruple.  

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I was never invited to "chicken pox parties" - updated

"Chicken pox" (varicella) was in the news last month [November 2011] when offers for infected lollipops were posted on the internet:

Wendy Werkit, of Nashville, offered to send other parents a "fresh batch of pox" on lollipops or cotton-buds in return for $50 (£31) via PayPal...

Her advertisement was placed on a Facebook page intended to help parents find a "pox party" in their local area, where children can mix and pick up the virus, which can be more dangerous if suffered later.

Advice for the best way to send chickenpox emerged in a thread of postings on the site. "Tuck it inside a ziplock baggie then put it in the envelope," it said. "Don't put anything identifying it as pox." 

The photo above comes from a detailed article at Inhabitots, which discusses the pros and cons of naturally vs. vaccine-acquired immunity.

Not getting vaccinated against chicken pox can result in some serious health issues. For example, anyone who has gotten chicken pox naturally in their life (not been vaccinated) can later get shingles. While the chicken pox vaccine doesn’t guarantee immunity from shingles, it increases the odds you won’t get and if you do, it makes the disease less severe...

It's not a new topic; "Inside New York Chicken Pox Parties" was published in 2009.

More kids stopped by throughout the afternoon to play and rub elbows with the sick celebrants. The younger kids passed the time chasing each other, playing make-believe games about forest animals and gnomes and watching Snow White, while the older kids kept busy reading books, playing video games and practicing the guitar. " The 12-year-old son was joking about how, normally, his mother tells him to cover his mouth," Penelope says. "Now all of a sudden, his mom's trying to spread his germs. He was enjoying pointing out the hypocrisy of it all." On her way out several hours later, she had an idea. "I have a friend who couldn't find a pox party, so a mother in California overnighted her son's pajamas to her. Her kid slept in them and got chicken pox," Penelope says. "So I asked, 'Do you mind if I borrow some [dirty clothes]?' The mom gave me a pair of just-worn pajamas. My daughter slept in them that night and then I mailed them back." Alas, Dr. Gershon says this plan isn't likely to work: "Chicken pox does not spread by clothing. It requires being in direct contact with a person with active chicken pox or shingles." And, indeed, after all the trouble, Penelope's daughter remains pox-free, though she plans to try again.

Those of you with children may want to read more at one of the links.

Addendum:  Reposted from 2011 to incorporate this report of "measles parties."

She was approached recently by a friend who knew her kids were unvaccinated. The friend offered to help set up a play date with another child who was sick.

“She said, ‘I know someone who has the measles, would you like to be connected with them?’” Schiffman said.

Measles parties and chicken pox parties are practices that developed in eras before vaccines for those diseases were available... “People did this with chicken pox all the time,” said Art Reingold, an epidemiology professor at UC Berkeley who worked at the Centers for Disease Control in the 1980s. “Parents would have kids lick a lollipop and give it to other kids, or mail it to other kids.”

The chicken pox vaccine was licensed for use in 1995; for measles in 1963. Today, some parents are still deliberately getting their kids sick because they don’t believe in vaccines.

“The basic notion is ‘this is my opportunity for my kid to get immune the old fashioned way, the way God intended,’” Reingold said. “’The way nature intended.’”

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Review of an anti-vaccination book for children

Salon explains:

In 2012, a proactive Australian anti-vaxxer named Stephanie Messenger self-published a children’s book called “Melanie’s Marvelous Measles.” With the book, Messenger endeavored to “educate children on the benefits of having measles and how you can heal from them naturally and successfully.”

Amazon offers a disclaimer that the book is “provided by the publisher/author of this title and presents the subjective opinions of the publisher/author, which may not be substantiated.”

Comments on the book are more incisive.  This one by is my favorite:

“Don’t overlook the lesser known Dr. Seuss books in this series – ‘Horton hears an air raid siren’, ‘Oh the places you’ll itch’, ‘How the Grinch caught Chlamydia’, ‘And to Think That I Contracted It on Mulberry Street’, ‘Skull Fracture Mayzie’, ‘Hop on your remaining foot’, ‘The 500 days in ICU of Bartholomew Cubbins’, and ‘If I Ran the Mortuary.’” 

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More than you would ever need to know about beaver testicles

My curiosity started with the above image, from a bestiary quiz at Medievalists.net.  The creature depicted is identified as a beaver, but why is he biting his testicles?

I found a lengthy discussion of the use of the beaver in heraldry at the website of the Norton family, whose coat-of-arms depicts three beavers.

In Christian symbolism the Beaver represents chastity and the willingness to sacrifice anything that hinders one's walk with God. This icon is also a symbol of vigilance and self-sacrifice, and was often used in Heraldry as a symbol of protection and dedication...

The beaver is hunted for its testicles, which are valued for making medicine. When the beaver sees that it cannot escape from the hunter, it bites off its testicles and throws them to the hunter, who then stops pursuing the beaver. If another hunter chases the beaver, it shows the hunter that it has already lost its testicles and so is spared. The allegory is that those who want to live a proper life should cut themselves off from sin, so that the devil, seeing nothing he wants, does not pursue.

They also provide the full image from which the top one is cropped -

Among the many citations there is this one -

Sir Thomas Browne - Of the Bever.
(1646; 6th ed., 1672) Pseudodoxia Epidemica III.iv (pp. 124-127) CHAP IV.
THAT a Bever to escape the Hunter, bites off his testicles or stones, is a Tenet very ancient; and hath had thereby advantage of propagation. For the same we find in the Hieroglyphicks of the Egyptians[,] in the Apologue of Æsop, an Author of great Antiquity, who lived in the beginning of the Persian Monarchy, and in the time of Cyrus: the same is touched by Aristotle in his Ethicks, but seriously delivered by Ælian, Pliny, and Solinus: the same we meet with in Juvenal, who by an handsome and Metrical expression more welcomly engrafts it in our junior Memories...

- documenting the antiquity of this belief.

Finally I turned to Wikipedia for a modern take on the topic:

Both beaver testicles and castoreum, a bitter-tasting secretion with a slightly fetid odor contained in the castor sacs of male or female beaver, have been articles of trade for use in traditional medicine. Yupik medicine used dried beaver testicles like willow bark to relieve pain. Dried beaver testicles were also used as contraception. Beaver testicles were used as medicine in Iraq and Iran during the tenth to nineteenth century. Claudius Aelianus comically described beavers chewing off their testicles to preserve themselves from hunters, which is not possible because the beaver's testicles are inside its body. European beavers (Castor fiber) were eventually hunted nearly to extinction in part for the production of castoreum, which was used as an analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and antipyretic. Castoreum was described in the 1911 British Pharmaceutical Codex for use in dysmenorrhea and hysterical conditions (i.e. pertaining to the womb), for raising blood pressure and increasing cardiac output. 

I presume the internal position of the testicles (as in the hippopotamus, which is notoriously difficult to castrate) is what originally gave rise to the legend of the animals self-castration.

And finally, this -

The activity of castoreum has been credited to the accumulation of salicin from willow trees in the beaver's diet, which is transformed to salicylic acid and has an action very similar to aspirin.

- which (assuming it's true) is to me the most interesting item of the day.

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Some Vikings filed their teeth

The Viking practice of filing their teeth has only been recently uncovered. A study from 2005 discovered 22 males from Viking Age Sweden who had filed teeth. Archaeologist Caroline Arcini wrote that “the marks are skilfully made, and it is most likely that the individuals did not make the marks themselves, but that someone else must have filed them.”

Most Vikings did not have such dental work done, which is perhaps not unsurprising considering that the filing of teeth would have been an extremely painful procedure. The filings were done on the top set of the teeth in the front, and in her study Arcini notes that they were generally similar in design. She adds that to show off the teeth the Viking male would have had to smile broadly. Furthermore she speculates that they may have even coloured their teeth as well, explaining “Maybe they mixed some color with fat or wax before putting it on the teeth, e.g., fat and charcoal to get a black line."

Via Medievalists.net, citing Caroline Arcini’s article ‘The Vikings bare their filed teeth’ in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Volume 128, Issue 4 (2005)

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Anti-vaxxers of the 1930s

Via.

In related news, this Salon article: "GOP senator: Don’t make employees wash their hands after going to the bathroom, because freedom."

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"In your face" mites

Did you know there are "face mites" and that every adult harbors them?

They are so small that a dozen of them could dance on the head of a pin. They are more likely, though, to dance on your face, which they do at night when they mate, before crawling back into your follicles by day to eat. In those caves mother mites give birth to a few relatively large mite-shaped eggs. The eggs hatch, and then, like all mites, the babies go through molts in which they shed their external skeleton and emerge slightly larger. Once they’re full size, their entire adult life lasts only a few weeks. Death comes at the precise moment when the mites, lacking an anus, fill up with feces, die, and decompose on your head.

I'll leave out any photographs so as not to creep out sensitive readers; you can view a gallery at National Geographic.

You learn something every day.

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Ötzi's tattoos

The existence of the tattoos on an ice age man is not particularly surprising, nor are they artistically interesting -

- but their distribution, as reported in an io9 article, is fascinating:

On account of the various locations of the tattoos, some researchers suspected that the marks were part of some therapeutic medical treatment, a kind of acupuncture to relieve pain in the joints.

The article notes that the tats were created not with a needle, but by making a laceration and then rubbing charcoal into it.

In 2011 I wrote a post entitled The Face of Ötzi the Iceman regarding a recently-completed forensic reconstruction.  At that time reader Judyofthewoods offered the opinion that these tattoos marked acupuncture or acupressure points.  She offered a link to a relevant article in Acupuncure Today:

Experts from three acupuncture societies then examined the locations of the tattoos. In their opinion, nine tattoos could be identified as being located directly on, or within six millimeters of, traditional acupuncture points. Two more were located on an acupuncture meridian. One tattoo was used as a local point. The remaining three tattoos were situated between 6-13mm from the closest acupuncture point.

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Every winter men give the finger to snowblowers

Since 2003, roughly 9,000 Americans have lost a finger (or two, or three) to a snowblower-related injury, according to estimates derived from Consumer Product Safety Commission data. Overall, about 15 percent of people who go to the E.R. as a result of a snowblower injury end up getting fingers amputated.

The year-to-year fluctuation in these numbers is probably related to the number of severe snow storms in the U.S.

Why are men losing their fingers? For the simple reason that they keep sticking their hands in snowblowers while they're still running.

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Young blood reverses some age-related impairments

As reported in the prestigious Nature Medicine:

At the cognitive level, systemic administration of young blood plasma into aged mice improved age-related cognitive impairments in both contextual fear conditioning and spatial learning and memory... Our data indicate that exposure of aged mice to young blood late in life is capable of rejuvenating synaptic plasticity and improving cognitive function.

Discussed at a webpage of UC San Francisco:

Anatomically, it was clear that these mice formed more structural and functional connections between neurons, or nerve cells, while they also turned on more genes associated with the formation of new nerve connections.

Furthermore, the researchers found that a protein called Creb became more activated in the brain region known as the hippocampus, and that this increased activity was associated with the anatomical and cognitive improvements the team observed...

Identifying and getting rid of aging factors in old blood, or supplying youthful factors from young blood, might both be worthwhile strategies to combat aging...

There is an AMA with the lead author at the Reddit Journal of Science.

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Res ipsa loquitur

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Computer Vision Syndrome

Explained at Vox:

A significant number of heavy computer users experience a range of symptoms that researchers group under the umbrella phrase "computer vision syndrome."...

Studies have shown that when people read from computer screens, their blink rate plummets — but this also happens when people read words from a printed page. In either case, when you blink less frequently, your eyes are much more likely to become dried out....

Eye strain is the second-most common complaint of computer vision syndrome, and can be accompanied by headaches and pain in or around the eyes... It may also lead to a related problem: difficulty focusing...

Observational studies have found that, in general, a person's level of education — and thus the amount of reading they've done over their lifetime — is positively correlated with their risk of myopia. But the direction of causation could go either way: they could have read more growing up, becoming both more educated and myopic, or for various reasons people prone to myopia could be more likely to read more...

Every twenty minutes, a person should look away from their desk for twenty seconds, and focus on something at least twenty feet away," he says. This prevents your eyes from focusing at near distances for extremely long durations, forcing them to alter their focal distance. It's also a good idea to consciously do some blinking at this sort of regular interval, in order to prevent excessive dryness. Your desk should also be set up in a way to minimize eye stress. It's recommended that your monitor be positioned 20 to 40 inches in front of your eyes, and the top of the monitor should line up with your eye level, so you're looking down about 15 degrees when you stare at the screen. 

More at the link.

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Toothbrushes. Tooth worms. And George Washington's lonely tooth.

Toothbrushes at the National Museum of Dentistry include, from left to right: A miswak or chew stick, an early 20th century celluloid toothbrush by Taub, a rubber-tipped gum stimulator and toothbrush from pre-1945, a Strockway rotary toothbrush from the 1950s, a Dr. Mayland’s rubber toothbrush from the 1920s, a 1930s Rotor toothbrush, and another chew stick.

From an interesting article at Collector's Weekly.

Since at least 3000 B.C., people in the Mesopotamian region used the frayed ends of fibrous twigs or chew sticks, also known as miswak or siwak sticks, to clean their teeth. “Different cultures have used twigs from trees and shrubs with wood grain that is very intertwined,” says Scott Swank, a dentist, historian, and curator of the National Museum of Dentistry. “You peel the bark off and chew it to get the fibers to fray out, and then you use those frayed fibers to clean your teeth. They’re still used today in some parts of Africa and the Middle East.”

Much more at the link, including information on "toothworms":

“Many people in the past believed ‘tooth worms’ were the cause of tooth decay—tiny creatures that would bore holes in people’s teeth,” explains Fitzharris. Records indicate that the fear of tooth worms goes back at least to the time of the Sumerians, or around 5,000 years ago... “Often, practitioners would try to smoke the worm out by heating a mixture of beeswax and henbane seed on a piece of iron and directing the fumes into the cavity with a funnel,” Fitzharris says. “Afterwards, the hole was filled with powdered henbane seed and gum mastic, which may have provided temporary relief given the fact that henbane is a mild narcotic.

And this about George Washington's dentures:

By the time Washington was elected president at age 57, he only had one natural tooth remaining in his mouth. “During the presidency, he lost that one, too,” says Swank. [note the hole in his dentures, designed to accommodate that last tooth]

And finally:

By the mid-19th century, dentures were often referred to as “Waterloo Teeth,” after those surreptitiously ripped from the bodies of dead soldiers following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815... While publicly frowned upon, stealing teeth from dead soldiers continued throughout the Crimean War and the American Civil War. 

Much more at the link.  You learn something every day.

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Murder by digitalis poisoning in the 14th century - updated

From the abstract in the Journal of Archaeological Science:

Cangrande [della Scala] died on July 22 1329, four day after his triumphal entrance in the city of Treviso. The sudden death was preceded by vomit and diarrhoea with fever that, according to written documents, he had contracted a few days before by “drinking from a polluted spring”. The gastrointestinal symptoms manifested by Cangrande in his last hours of life are compatible with the early phase of Digitalis intoxication and the hypothesis of poisoning is mentioned by some local historical sources. The palaeo-pathological analyses confirm a Digitalis poisoning. The most likely hypothesis on the causes of death is that of a deliberate administration of a lethal amount of Digitalis. Although several cases of poisoning through the use of organic substances are known from historical sources, no other direct evidences are documented in the palaeopathological literature.

A well-done Powerpoint presentation of the autopsy findings is available here.  The photo of the foxglove was taken in our back garden.

A physician of Cangrande's was hanged by his successor Mastino II, adding more weight to the possibility that foul play was at least suspected, although who was ultimately behind the killing is likely to remain a mystery. One of the principal suspects at least in terms of motive must in fact be Cangrande's nephew, the ambitious Mastino II himself.

Addendum:  A possible modern case of mass digitalis poisoning:

On 11 January 2015, authorities in Mozambique reported that 69 people had died and nearly 200 were hospitalized after drinking contaminated beer at a funeral...

Early reports suggested the beer had been poisoned with "crocodile bile", known and sold by local practitioners as "nduru". Forbes Magazine published an online article quoting studies which suggested that crocodile bile is relatively harmless, and suggesting the active ingredient in such poisonings was likely some cardiac glycoside, such as digitalis. Digitalis purpurea, the variety of foxglove flower that is the normal source of digitalis, has become common in the area after introduction by European settlers; the foxglove variety that is native to Africa, Ceratotheca triloba, resembles the poisonous plant but does not contain digitalis.

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Philip Verheyen dissecting his amputated leg - Updated

Philip Verheyen (1648-1711) was a Flemish physician. In 1675 an illness required the amputation of his left leg.

Once the leg was injected, it was placed in a container of liquor balsamicus or Nantic brandy and black pepper, which permanently prevented decomposition. It is thought that Verheyen's strong religious views made him deeply suspicious of burying one part of his body before the remainder was ready for the same fate.

After the amputation he began to experience the sensations that today are called "phantom limb syndrome" -

Sensations which in many ways prompted him to take up a career in anatomy in order to probe and understand this phenomenon and also write the deeply personal series of notes (1700-1710) that may be translated either as " Notes on My Amputated Leg," or "Letters to My Amputated Leg," the former seeming more probable, while the latter is more in keeping with the tone of the notes.

His interest, curiously, was more than anatomical...

by 1693 Verheyen began dissections on his preserved left leg. He is known for having coined the term "Chorda Achillis" during this time - referring to the only part of Achilles's body that his mother held, as she dipped him into the Styx leaving it vulnerable to decay and death. As gleaned from his Notes, his aim was to prove that the nagging sensation of his phantom limb in fact originated from the actual amputated limb, rather than some psychosomatic, or worse still, numinous force.

He continued to be fascinated by his leg in the final decades of his life...

...in the Fall of 1710, he found Verheyen intently gazing out of his window in some distraction. His amputated leg lay on the surgery table dissected into so many separate parts. Each infinitesimal tendon, muscle and nerve cut down to its primary unit, was labeled and spread across the wooden tabletop.
That winter, Philippe Verheyen died and was buried near the Abbey of Vlierbeek. Though there is no written record of this fact, it is assumed that his leg was buried along with him.

via Uncertain Times.

Update:  I first posted this in 2009.  It was recently commented on by reader Hedwige Daenens, who identified the artwork as a recent art project, not an 18th century painting.

Phillip Verheyen was a real person and a distinguished anatomist.  And he did have his leg amputated.  But there are good reasons to conclude that the story of him dissecting his own amputated leg is fictional.  There is a superb biography of him in Acta Chirurgica Belgica (pdf).

I don't mind that an artist has created a project that portrays an imagined event in the life of a real person; artists and authors do that all the time.  I do object when she inserts that painting into a Wikipedia entry with a fake notation: "Artist: Anonymous (18th c)Title: Philippe Verheyen Dissecting His Amputated Limb (1715-1730) Medium: Oil on Panel Size: 16.3"X16.5" Source: Collection of Pieter Deheijde."

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A potential treatment for multiple sclerosis

Excerpts from the report at JAMA Neurology (the new name for the Archives of Neurology):

High-dose immunosuppressive therapy (HDIT) with autologous hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) may.. induce sustained remissions in early MS.

Results  Grafts were collected from 25 patients, and 24 of these individuals received HDIT/HCT. The median follow-up period was 186 weeks (interquartile range, 176-250) weeks). Overall event-free survival was 78.4% (90% CI, 60.1%-89.0%) at 3 years. Progression-free survival and clinical relapse-free survival were 90.9% (90% CI, 73.7%-97.1%) and 86.3% (90% CI, 68.1%-94.5%), respectively, at 3 years. Adverse events were consistent with expected toxic effects associated with HDIT/HCT, and no acute treatment-related neurologic adverse events were observed. Improvements were noted in neurologic disability, quality-of-life, and functional scores.


Conclusions and Relevance  At 3 years, HDIT/HCT without maintenance therapy was effective for inducing sustained remission of active RRMS and was associated with improvements in neurologic function. Treatment was associated with few serious early complications or unexpected adverse events.

In the present study, HDIT/HCT induced remission of MS disease activity for up to 3 years in most participants. It may therefore represent a potential therapeutic option for patients with MS in whom conventional immunotherapy fails, as well as for other severe immune-mediated diseases of the central nervous system. Most early toxic effects were hematologic and gastrointestinal and were expected and reversible. Longer follow-up is needed to determine the durability of the response... We have presented the 3-year interim analysis of the HALT-MS trial; the prespecified full duration of observation is 5 years, after which the final report on the study will be prepared.

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This is a beautiful tattoo

It covers a facial burn scar.

Samira Omar pushes back her headscarf to reveal burn scars that swirl along her face and neck. Her hands are also dotted with colourless patches where her skin was scorched.  The 17-year-old says she was the victim of a horrific bullying incident in August. She says four classmates she thought were her friends, beat her and then doused her with boiling water...

She thought she’d be scarred for life. But then Omar heard about para-medical tattoo specialist Basma Hameed... Over time, Hameed will camouflage Omar’s burns by tattooing them with ink that blends with her natural skin tones...

Patients from around the world seek out Hameed’s skills. She started her Toronto clinic in 2011 and recently opened a second location in Chicago. In addition to scar victims, she also treats people with vitiligo...

More details at the CBC article.

Note there is also an organization called Survivors Ink.

Survivors Ink is a project that addresses the issue of branding. The purpose is to empower human trafficking victims by breaking the psychological chains of enslavement through beautifying, removing, or covering the brandings that are constant reminders of a violent past.

Related previous post:  Medical nipple tattoos vs. "titoos"

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Cigarette smoking plummeting in the United States

Both graphs from an extensive discussion of the rise and fall of cigarette smoking in a recent article at The Atlantic.

I started at the peak of the first graph (left margin of the second one) and quit nine years ago.  Smart decision.

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The death of Frederic Chopin

For decades I've assumed that Frederic Chopin died of tuberculosis; that's what I told my students in lectures and handouts.  Now I learn his cause of death is still being debated.

Chopin died in an apartment in Place Vendome, in Paris, on 17 October 1849, at the age of 39. France's greatest authority on tuberculosis had diagnosed him with the disease months earlier, and duly noted it as the cause on the death certificate.

But things then became less clear. The same doctor, Jean Cruveilhier, removed Chopin's heart and carried out an autopsy. Precisely what he recorded is not known - the notes he made were lost. However, reports suggest he referred to something other than TB, a "disease not previously encountered"...

Then in September, the debate appeared to be over. The forensic and genetic scientists who had gathered months earlier at the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw for that unprecedented examination revealed their conclusions at a news conference. Chopin's heart was well preserved and bore "TB nodules" they reported. It was also "much enlarged, suggesting respiratory problems, linked to a lung disease"...

... the possibility remains that the heart reinterred in the pillar of the church in October 1945, amid patriotic celebration in the ruins of a devastated city, is not Chopin's.

 Photo cropped for size from the original at Wikipedia.

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