Vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies bind to the H protein of a historical measles virus.

Measles is a highly contagious airborne viral disease. It can lead to serious complications and death and is preventable by vaccination. The live-attenuated measles vaccine (LAMV) derived from a measles virus (MV) isolated in 1954 has been in use globally for six decades and protects effectively by providing a durable humoral and cell-mediated immunity. Our study addresses the temporal stability of epitopes on the viral surface glycoprotein hemagglutinin (H) which is the major target of MV-neutralizing antibodies. We investigated the binding of seven vaccine-induced MV-H-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to cell-free synthesized MV-H proteins derived from the H gene sequences obtained from a lung specimen of a fatal case of measles pneumonia in 1912 and an isolate from a current case. The binding of four out of seven mAbs to the H protein of both MV strains provides evidence of epitopes that are stable for more than 100 years. The binding of the universally neutralizing mAbs RKI-MV-12b and RKI-MV-34c to the H protein of the 1912 MV suggests the long-term stability of highly conserved epitopes on the MV surface.

Archival influenza virus genomes from Europe reveal genomic variability during the 1918 pandemic.

The 1918 influenza pandemic was the deadliest respiratory pandemic of the 20th century and determined the genomic make-up of subsequent human influenza A viruses (IAV). Here, we analyze both the first 1918 IAV genomes from Europe and the first from samples prior to the autumn peak. 1918 IAV genomic diversity is consistent with a combination of local transmission and long-distance dispersal events. Comparison of genomes before and during the pandemic peak shows variation at two sites in the nucleoprotein gene associated with resistance to host antiviral response, pointing at a possible adaptation of 1918 IAV to humans. Finally, local molecular clock modeling suggests a pure pandemic descent of seasonal H1N1 IAV as an alternative to the hypothesis of origination through an intrasubtype reassortment.

Measles virus and rinderpest virus divergence dated to the sixth century BCE.

Many infectious diseases are thought to have emerged in humans after the Neolithic revolution. Although it is broadly accepted that this also applies to measles, the exact date of emergence for this disease is controversial. We sequenced the genome of a 1912 measles virus and used selection-aware molecular clock modeling to determine the divergence date of measles virus and rinderpest virus. This divergence date represents the earliest possible date for the establishment of measles in human populations. Our analyses show that the measles virus potentially arose as early as the sixth century BCE, possibly coinciding with the rise of large cities.

[Leopoldina insights. The "Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher" around 1750 as reflected in its correspondence]. / Leopoldina intern Die Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher um 1750 in spiegel korrespondenz.

The 18th century was the 'Golden Age' of scientific academies and learned societies. The oldest national medical academy still in existence, the "Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher" (Leopoldina), founded in 1652 in Schweinfurt as a private society, underwent steady growth after becoming an imperial institution with substantial privileges over the course of several decades. However, in comparison with other renowned academies in Europe, e.g. the English Royal Society or the French Académie des Sciences, it never gained a similar status due to the fact that its members lived far apart from each other and the seat of the academy was transferred to the residence of each new president, thus prohibiting the development of a geographical center. This paper focuses on the analysis of the central dialogue within the Leopoldina around 1750, the correspondence between the 6th president Andreas Elias Büchner (1701-1769), in Halle and the editor of the Leopoldina journal , the 13th Director Ephemeridum, Christoph Jacob Trew, in Nuremberg. Glancing at the four main topics of their long distance conversation - publishing the journal then called the '(Nova) Acta physico-medica', searching for new scientifically active members, improring the corporate identity amongst the Leopoldina members, enlarging the academy's library - it becomes clear that the Leopoldina profited greatly from the strong axis between Büchner and Trew. Their correspondence formed the center of a wide-spread network of letters through which the Leopoldina raised an active voice in the respublica litteraria, playing down Baroque curiosity and favoring a strong interest in rare and useful observations. Communication, interdisciplinarity and expertise formed the essential features of the Leopoldina's participation in the European natural scientific discourse.

[The professor and his student. The correspondence between Lorenz Heister and Christoph Jacob Trew]. / Der Lehrer und sein Schüler. Die Korrespondenz zwischen Lorenz Heister und Christoph Jacob Trew.

Letters were the central medium of communication in the medical scientific community of the 18th century. Professional as well as personal relationships were established among the various correspondents. These relationships constituted the smallest units of communication which contributed to the regional and international scientific network of the Republic of Letters. A correspondence that grew out of a trusted teacher-student relationship could gain an especially intense character both intellectually and personally. This contribution offers an analysis of an example of just such a correspondence. Lorenz Heister (1683--1758), medical professor at the universities of Altdorf and Helmstedt, and his disciple, Christoph Jacob Trew (1695--1769), who became a renowned physician and natural scientist in Nuremberg, communicated in letters to one another over a span of almost forty years. Their correspondence started as a rather asymmetrical dialogue. Over time, however, Heister and Trew came to meet as equals in almost every field of their competence. Their letters reveal a broad spectrum of scientific, organisational, professional, medical and personal issues which formed the basis of a stable and lasting learned correspondence in the age of Enlightenment.

Tracing life: the history, concept and goals of the new permanent exhibition in the Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité.

The Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité has been in existence since 1998. The institution aims to showcase medicine, yet it wants to show not only what medicine is but also and especially, how medicine came to be what it represents today. In its new permanent exhibition, opened on 25 October 2007, the museum takes a look at the development of medicine from a western, natural historical and scientific perspective over the last three centuries.

[Without sense and understanding? Rudolf Virchow's strategy of collecting by the example of his pathological museum]. / Ohne Sinn und Verstand? Rudolf Virchows Strategie des Sammelns am Beispiel seines Pathologischen Museums.

The Berlin pathologist Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) has been called a "m anic" collector in the most recent studies on the history of science and culture because of his collection of over 23,000 pathoanatomical wet and dry specimens. A closer look at Virchow's collecting efforts, however, reveal that there was system behind the relative abundance of objects. This contribution will attempt to reconstruct Virchow's collection concept as well as his ideas about a meaningful arrangement of the specimens in the museum he founded in 1899. The study follows a reference of Virchow's to the corresponding specimen collections in the English hospital schools, which Virchow had always seen as exemplary. In this connection, the strategies and concepts of the British pathologist Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866) will be investigated more closely as they relate to the specimen collection he administered at Guy's Hospital in London. There, abnormally changed organ specimens were presented along the two axes of anatomy and nosology. Virchow encountered this practice under the Charité prosector, Robert Froriep (1804-1861), where he experienced his socialization as collector and presenter in pathology between 1844 and 1847. In his second Berlin phase between 1856 and 1902, he expanded his institute at the Charité to a worldwide renowned center for pathology. During this time, Virchow added a third dimension to his collection strategy under the heading "progression", in order to document whole series in the developmental process of all diseases in all primarily and secondarily affected organs. After the opening of his Pathological Museum on the grounds of the CharitY, he strove until his death to arrange his specimens in the form of a three-dimensional textbook. Various structural conditions, a dearth of exhibition cases, as well as his decreasing vitality limited the scope of Virchow's achievements. The most essential reason why Virchow realized only a small portion of his exhibition concept, however, lay in the sheer endlessness of diseases to be portrayed in their being and manifestation.