Pustules, Palaeogenetics and Pandemics from Galen to Rhazes: How to do the Early History of Smallpox and Measles (2026 – 2030) is an interdisciplinary research project based in the Centre for Environments and Cultures of Health (CCEH), undertaken by academics in Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology (CAHRT) and the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies (IAIS) at the University of Exeter and funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award [322103/Z/24/Z].
The focus of the project is a multi-layered investigation into the history of smallpox, measles, and similar feverish, pustular infectious diseases in Afro-Eurasia from the second to the tenth century CE. The project team aims to re-frame and re-interpret the complex history and development of these diseases by bringing together an extensive body of writings in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic, with new genetic and scientific evidence, and therefore develop a better understanding of past societies, particularly as a resource for current scientific research into human health and illness.
THE RESEARCH TOPIC
The emerging discipline of palaeogenetics has re-invigorated study of diseases in the past. But new scientific techniques need to be pursued in dialogue with textual evidence and other archaeological material for a full picture.
Conversations between scientists, historians and archaeologists have begun, but new methodologies and scholarly conventions have to be established as a matter of urgency.
Rich understandings of pathological histories are crucial to comprehending past societies themselves and to current scientific research into human health and illness. How specific diseases have changed, in their wider contexts, is a critical historical concern indicative of present and future possibilities.
This innovative project pursues all these key objectives through investigating the history of smallpox, measles and similar infectious diseases from Galen to Rhazes. These two prolific authors stand at crucial epidemiological and intellectual junctures in a continuous, multi-lingual medical tradition, and we will use—for the first time—the full array of textual resources they provide for the study of these diseases, in their various manifestations.
We will explore how the scattered palaeogenetic data fts with this complex picture, bring people together to develop more robust interdisciplinary methodologies in this area, and offer valuable insights for meeting current health challenges
THE RESEARCH
Pustules, Palaeogenetics and Pandemics is a interdisciplinary research project, drawing on multidisciplinary expertise from across the University and internationally. It brings together historians, archaeologists and scientists to investigate the early history of smallpox, measles and similar serious infectious diseases, more specifically, in epidemic and endemic forms, across the ancient Mediterranean and medieval Islamicate worlds, and globally.
The project will trace pustular fevers of different kinds through Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic medical texts, which were all part of a lively continuing tradition, starting with Galen’s Greek and concluding by producing the first modern edition of Rhazes’ Arabic treatise on smallpox and measles, with an up-to-date translation and notes. Importantly, it will also engage with the scattered palaeogenetic data—analysis of ancient pathogen DNA—and evolutionary models that are emerging around the variola virus (which causes smallpox), and other archaeological evidence. In so doing, it will seek to answer questions, including how these diverse sources are best put into dialogue? How can we make the most effective use of a much richer multi-lingual medical tradition than is usually recognised? And what does understanding changing disease patterns in the past have to offer current health challenges?
The project team will address two main research questions:
- What kind of histories of smallpox, measles and other eruptive fevers can be reconstructed for Afro Eurasia from the second to the tenth centuries CE (and beyond) adopting an interdisciplinary approach centred around close critical readings of multilingual textual sources?
- How is the new scientific evidence—including genomic data—best combined with other sources to produce the richest and fullest history of diseases more generally? How far do these new histories change our conception of disease?
“Our aim is to rewrite the early history of these specific diseases and transform approaches to the history of disease in general,” comments co-investigator Nahyan Fancy, the Al Qasimi Professor of Islamic Studies at Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. “And we will advocate for current medical science to take the history of disease seriously, as a discipline and a resource for today’s health sector.”
