Leprosy is much less common today than it was during the Middle Ages, but the bacterium that causes this debilitating disease has hardly changed since then, a new study finds. Researchers sequenced ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. More than 1,000 years ago, a woman living in the British Isles became horribly disfigured after ...

Leprosy has been long gone from Great Britain. Or so we thought. Medieval Leprosy Lurks In British Squirrels People and leprosy go way back. Way, way back. "It's been around for at least 5,000 years ...

A woodcut from the 1800s, Healing the Lepers, depicts the common tableau of Jesus healing a leper as his disciples look on. Look through a series of 15th-century woodcuts, and you'll find that the ...

Scientists have reconstructed a dozen medieval and modern leprosy genomes -- suggesting a European origin for the North American leprosy strains found in armadillos and humans, and a common ancestor ...

Evidence from archaeological sites in the medieval English city of Winchester shows that English red squirrels once served as an important host for Mycobacterium leprae strains that caused leprosy in ...

In medieval England, red squirrels were popular pets and their fur was widely used to trim and line clothes Humans may have caught leprosy from squirrels in medieval times, researchers say. They ...

Medieval residents of Winchester, England, probably got their leprosy from red squirrels in the area, according to a team of archaeologists and geneticists that studied remains from two archaeological ...

People and leprosy go way back. Way, way back. "It's been around for at least 5,000 years and probably longer," says Stewart Cole, who directs the Global Health Institute at the Swiss Federal ...