an hour ago
I am living in Poggio a Caiano and I never expect it will be mentioned on HN. I know very well the history of Bianca Cappello and I am not surprised about the malaria. The area around Poggio a Caiano (Poggio means exactly "small hills") was a swamp and malaria was very common.
10 hours ago
tl;dr; - Scientists did DNA testing on the remains of the Grand Duke and his wife, and found malaria. The rival theory is poisoning by the relative who was next in line for the Ducal throne. HOWEVER, this test result solves nothing:
> But is there any guarantee that Francesco was not also poisoned?
> “Perhaps not,” Ochoa said, “but the genetic evidence presented in our study decreases the margin for speculation.”
> Gisella Caccone, a senior research scientist also at Yale and a study coauthor, agrees. “We can say that they had malaria, we cannot say that they were not poisoned as well,” Caccone said in an email.
10 hours ago
Maybe they were poisoned, had malaria, were stabbed, and also suffocated and drowned, all at the same time?
"solves" is a silly thing to ask for in matters of probability. I think this test result adds data which shifts probabilities, and that's the best we'll get.
10 hours ago
Maybe they were poisoned, had malaria, were stabbed, and also suffocated and drowned, all at the same time?
Just now learning Grigori Rasputin died of malaria.
7 hours ago
Right. If one lives in an area prone to malaria, has good immune system, will the body tend to carry the antibodies all the time?
7 hours ago
Yes, which is why the immunological tests done in 2006 were not seen as conclusive. However, this time they found actual plasmodium DNA which suggests active infection at time of death. Including from two species, suggesting double infection. Fun.
5 hours ago
I live in Ghana, we have malaria as a common (not too common though) ailment. I have also had malaria several times, though the last time was almost 9 years ago.
As I understand it, some malaria parasites can remain dormant in the body for a long time. Clinical symptoms develop once the parasite burden and immune response become sufficient to cause illness.
Not sure if the couple had made trips to Tuscany before the last one, but it is interesting they found two species of malaria pathogens.
I thought that was also an interesting angle to consider.
3 hours ago
> Not sure if the couple had made trips to Tuscany before
Dude, they were the royal family of Tuscany. They lived there. Which is why this test is not conclusive: sure, they had malaria, but at the time it was pretty common in the region and they likely had it for a long time.
7 hours ago
Interesting. Little brother brought a new version of malaria to try...
7 hours ago
The pedantic answer is "yes".
The pragmatic answer is "if only it was that easy" -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria#Immune_system_evasion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_malaria_deaths_201...
6 hours ago
what a mess, what is the significance of resolving this? land claims? title? access to frozen assets? recarving borders? treaties?
7 minutes ago
Trying to be positive, there are lots of researchers in the world trying to improve forensic anthropomorphic techniques for the betterment of mankind and this is an interesting enough project to work on?
But yes, if they had malaria, does it make it their cause of death? Who knows?
2 hours ago
I too am astounded by humanities desire to know things without a monetary benefit. Don't they understand the money spent on this could've gone to a vulture capital?
3 hours ago
Historical curiosity
an hour ago
It's Italy, there's probably a dispute over a dozen tenements in Florence.
7 hours ago
so interesting.
I worked for a very small company getting funding by the Medici Fund a while back. First I ever heard of the name.
So much intrigue in the past. Guys like Montaigne were said to have "food tasters" to sample the goods before they ate themselves.
As a career trace analytical chemist, I can tell you for sure, that weird poisonings are so much less likely to occur now, because of the probability of detection. That's a little comforting. The same goes for the food supply. Mechanisms are in place to rapidly detect deliberately placed poisons.
9 hours ago
My family has spent centuries marrying into an alternative claimant to the Grand Duke of Tuscany who did not inherit through Ferdinando I. We were planning to use this as an excuse to invade Italy and put the scion of our own dynasty on the throne and establish ourselves as royalty in the annals of history.
Unfortunately, this + the unification of Italy may have irredeemably foiled our plan.
Not sure what to do now, should I find a wife with a better claim?
8 hours ago
Nah, ditch the wife. Become a cardinal in the Catholic church, then get elected pope. From there it should be fairly trivial to re-establish the Papal States to their largest extent.
9 hours ago
Not sure, but I would 100% buy a copy of your family cookbook.
Just imagine the titles you could use.
5 hours ago
Unfortunately most of the recipes call for “tears of a noble bloodline.”
9 hours ago
> Not sure what to do now, should I find a wife with a better claim?
Naah. You start an AI company!
9 hours ago
Just fund your own group of grave diggers with PhDs and an attached museum.
4 hours ago
Very Crusader Kings :)
7 hours ago
No, do not stop the efforts! The story here tells us that risks of being poisoned (once the throne is obtained) are greatly exaggerated.
9 hours ago
You could marry your claim to an ideological framework upholding the Divine Right of Kings and traditionalist conservatism, causing it to live for centuries longer in the form of monarchy enthusiast cranks.
3 hours ago
What's this one? Fable or Sol?
10 hours ago
Nice work science, but 400 years is a long time to hold onto old grudges. I go by what the "Good Book" says and "forgive and forget."
(sorry guys channeling my ken m)
6 hours ago
I miss him.
