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Comment by esaym | Hacker News Reader

There was an earlier excavation of some of the frozen corpses as well and they were taken to laboratories to be studied. After thawing some of the gut bacteria, some were still alive. One of the scientist was smart enough to experiment with how the old bacteria handled modern antibiotics. Strangely many already had resistance[1]. And this discovery was largely unreported.

[1]http://tinyurl.com/z9sy2qn

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> Strangely many already had resistance

Keep in mind that modern antibiotics were created partly because at the time plants with antibiotic properties were being used so heavily that they were already becoming endangered. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldenseal

In case anyone else was confused, those corpses retrieved and studied in the above article were bodies buried from the same expedition, not bodies recovered from the sunken ship. Thanks for sharing the clipping though, very fascinating.

Yes the dug up bodies were from men who died during the expeditions first season, which had actually gone pretty well.

Unfortunately, they anchored the ships for the winter, shortly after those men died, in pretty much the worst place possible, on the western side of King William's Island.[1]

This is a spot where all the pack ice from the north west flows to, forming a huge towering jumble of ice. They fully expected their ships to be iced in for the winter, this was normal.

They expected to get underway again once the ice cleared in the spring.

But the winter was exceptionally harsh and the ice so thick that they remained trapped for much longer than they expected.

[1] Known as King Williams Land in those days, the remaining portion of the northwest passage, ironically, was just to the south of where the doomed ships were iced in. It would be John Rae (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rae_(explorer) ) who would truly discover the final link.

this isn't related to anything, but out of personal curiosity can you tell me whether you are a manager? (you can mail me at the link in my profile, if you don't want to reply here for whatever reason). I'm just curious and have no follow-up either way. thanks.

I am not a manager. Why do you ask?

Thanks for the reply! I got downvotes before I removed the context, it doesn't matter and I removed that part (but I don't want more downvotes so I don't want to say, plus it doesn't matter.)

You can mail me if you want to know.

I wonder if you (or anyone) know where to find the study?

I found the researcher herself, but none of her publications seem to be about this

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kinga_Kowalewska-Grocho...

Reminds me of when the military dug up corpses from the artic so they could get at the 1917 Spanish flu

Link?

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about it for the New Yorker in 1997.

http://gladwell.com/the-dead-zone/

Fascinating, but can someone explain why the text reads

  I–PERMAFROST
  
  On September 24, viagra 1918, three days after setting sail ...

What does that "VIAGRA" (on a small caps font) do there?

Looks like the blog was hacked at some point, and what you are looking at is old SEO spam.

Note that it links to buyviagraonlinefree dot net.

I've never heard of this before, but a quick Google revealed this article (along others), which is probably what 2AF3 is referring to. Not sure of the military connection.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-11-18/news/9911180290_...

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