Reddit mentions of Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It

Bit late to answer this, and it's not quite 'archaeology' but I think it fits anyways. Sorry if my answer ends up being a little meandering, it's my first time answering an AskScience question! I have a degree in immunology, and have just the case to answer this.

In the late 90s, the sequence of the 1918 H1N1 deadly flu was published. Side note: it's commonly called the "Spanish" flu, but that's actually propaganda from the US army to deflect the source of the infection. The first cases were diagnosed on military bases on US soil, and one of the samples tested to find the virus's genetic sequence was from one of these samples. So, I won't be calling it 'Spanish' flu, because it didn't originate in Spain, and it swept the whole world, so I think it's unfair to malign the Spanish in such a way.

The paper I linked above doesn't talk about how the samples were excavated, but those details are given in the book Flu by Gina Kolata which does detail the hunt for the answers to why that particular strain of flu was so much more deadly than the H1N1 we still have today. In her book, Kolata mentions Taubenberger, who is first author on the paper.

So. Most of the following info is me summarizing what I remember from the book when I read it a few years ago. Scientists wanted to know why the 1918 flu was so deadly, and to do that they needed the genetic sequence - but where to find it? As I said, the flu was first noticed on US military bases, and the doctors took samples of lung tissue from infected soldiers who died of the flu, then preserved them in parrafin and stored them in a facility, as they did with all types of biological samples. In the paper I linked above, this is the sample it talks about.

This other paper mentions a second sample of infected lung tissue, recovered from a person frozen in permafrost after having died from the flu in 1918. The book tells a great story about how they tracked down these particular victims, and the troubles associated with that journey.

When the expedition was sure they'd found bodies of people who'd died from the flu in 1918, they took extreme caution. The book gets into some of the panic and fear that the flu would re-emerge, which was their motivation for taking biohazard precautions. When digging down to the bodies, they had biohazard tents and suits as well as respirators. The permafrost is cold enough to preserve living bacteria and viruses inside people, and doesn't normally go through freeze-thaw cycles (hence, 'perma'), so if the virus was still living, it very well could have been released into aerosols and infected those present at the excavation.

The bodies would have to have been frozen solid constantly, though, for the virus to still be viable. Unfortunately, some of the initial bodies they found had not been frozen permanently, and the permafrost wasn't so 'perma', and they didn't get viable viral samples from their initial expeditions. They did get some from later expeditions, though, and the virus was still viable enough to get some DNA samples from to amplify and analyze.

I can't really speak to other ancient bodies found by accident, or for example catching plague from ancient burial sites, but at least in the 1918 flu example, people were very worried about catching the flu from the bodies and they did take appropriate precautions.

I loved biomedical pop-sci with a passion when I was in high school. "Stiff" was on my bookshelf for sure. Didn't read Atul Gawande's stuff until later, but enjoyed them very much. My favorites from when I was a teen were:

• The Ghost Map, which is sort of about cholera, but really about epidemiology
  
  
• Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC
  
  
• The Hot Zone (Ebola) and The Demon in the Freezer (Smallpox)
  
  
• Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918
  
  and others, such as The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down. All are great reads.

If anybody wants a really good book on the 1918 Spanish Flu, read this book by Gina Kolata. I read it this summer and it provides a lot of the story behind the 1918 flu. It is less of an explanation book, and more of a story book but it basically is the whole story about the 1918 flu. A great read for anyone interested in these kinds of things.

Haha, yay for another person who is both fascinated and frightened by sickness! :)

I think my favorites are prion diseases because of how completely godawful they are. Being super sick is a thought that scares me, but at the same time, I'm amazed at the weird stuff our bodies are capable of doing.

If you're more of a book person than an ebook person like I am too, these are some of my favorite reads:

101 Diseases You Don't Want to Get which lists a pretty big variety of conditions - not all are fatal, some just make you feel like crap.

The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse This one discusses really nasty conditions, old-timey remedies, weird fetishes and just plain bizarre illnesses.

Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It Title's pretty self-explanatory on this one. :)

It protects America, and it gived herd immunity so people who can't get the shots don't get the flu. The flu is extremely dangerous, and yes, I think it is patriotic to get the flu. And no, I am a shill for no one, just someone who had a family member die from the flu. Read this book:

Flu by Gina Kolata. Fascinating read.