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Yum! Snacks for later! Lol

😲

This sparks a lot of questions and all of them are “why the fuck did he do that”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

@disabilitystor1.bsky.social Did you see this?

I have run across X-rays of prominent scholars in a project on institutional historiography.

How’s your friend doing?

Why did people save/share their smallpox scabs? 🥴

My god, I hope they were old enough to be vaccinated.

I would assume by then any virus is no longer viable? Right?... Right???

Omg

"I sent you my smallpox scabs. Please respond."

😳

*gasps in former library staff who occasionally worked in the archives*

"My dearest Eliza...I hope these smallpox scabs find you well..."

GROSS

This happens in the YA novel Code Orange, and the main character ends up getting kidnapped by bioterrorists. Between this and The Face On The Milk Carton, author Caroline B. Cooney was keeping my elementary school self reading WAY past my bedtime. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Or...

EEEEEYYYYYYEEWWWWWW....

My grandfather cut off his thumb when he was splitting kindling when he was 14 and kept it in a pickle jar of formaldehyde for the rest of his life.

Gaahhahahahhahah

WHAT

While looking at letters from Elizabeth Peabody in the 1860s, I came across one that contained "a flower from Queen Victoria’s garden."

So, when will RFK Jr. tell us about how those tasted?

NYS Library Manucripts and Special Collections had an item in the Factsheet Five zine, minicomics, and mail art collection titled Placenta that I understand had to be photographed and discarded. So I was told many years ago as a volunteer, anyway. Have not seen it in the catalog.

They just figured out the British supply of scabs was likely what triggered widespread Indigenous deaths in Australia. Potent things.

Coming soon as a new movie directed by Christopher Nolan

life imitates art (the important 2000s young adult novel CODE ORANGE by caroline b. cooney)

"As always, I remain your obedient servant and patient zero"

yeah, i get the probable why and all but what happened when the CDC arrived. Did the historian friend get a shot or were they old enough to have had the shot as a child or...what....??

was this your friend or has this happened MORE THAN ONCE?? 😭😭 abcnews.com/amp/Health/W...

It's the gift that keeps on giving...

I’m surprised the scans are still there

👀👀👀

Certain 👀 hairs in an envelope from sometime between 1890 and 1920. Turns out said hairs had been used as sideburns for a costume party.

Fun fact they used to grind those to give them in inoculations to children.

Aaaaaabsolutely the fuck no thank you.

Oh no

Somebody shared this story and I immediately knew it was told in response to something @tkingfisher.com must have posted.

I read this and now I'm genuinely wondering how common it might be for a poor researcher to encounter smallpox scabs in envelopes (a-la the fictional book CODE ORANGE).

That is true archival research.

Immediately screenshotting this to share with archivist friends as a warning

hooooooly shit

Don’t worry, they’ve seen this before www.foxnews.com/health/135-y...

"Tales from the Archives"

youtube.com/shorts/bkUz6...

Confederate or Union Soldier?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

One of my friends was doing some research at the American Philosophical Society archive, when she opened a box to find a skull. I’m glad stuff like this doesn’t tend to happen at my beloved BAV!

That both makes perfect sense and also feels like a series of conversations you'd never expect to have. "I can't make our meeting this afternoon; I am probably fine, but I did just interact with a biohazard and I have to wait for the CDC folks to arrive. I'll text you again when I know more."

this reminded me of a book i read in my youth 'code orange' takes a bioterrorism turn with it lol

Historian friend of mine had a email correspondent tell her that he had just found a similar letter and thought she would find it so exciting that he had put it in a bigger envelope and mailed it to her. She also called the CDC, and that letter was yoinked out of the post office.

cc @kakape.bsky.social

And I thought having to deal with 'sexually damaged books' was bad. (Less of that now because Internet wanking! Beware of public terminals!)

Take a second and think about the person on the CDC end of that first phone call 😀

One of the Small advantages of being old is I know I was vaccinated against it. I was born into a world where it had not been eradicated so why take chances.

Luckily that never happened to me back when they allowed historians into Fort Detrick.

ha this reminds me of when we were going through my grandpa's stuff after he died and found an envelope labeled "my shrapnel" and a date. And sure enough, it was the shrapnel they took out of him in Korea.

… Did the sender include WHY they were mailing their smallpox scabs?

I love it when archaeology intersects with other disciplines Last time that happened for me it was explosives!

Omg, that's amazing 😂😂

Makes you appreciate mRNA vaccines knowing there was a time when it was more of a “here, have a scab” situation.

As they warned me in Canberra, wash your hands constantly. You never know what is living down there.

People have always been weird in the “hey, look at this weird thing I got!” way, like a dog compulsively rolling is some awful smell he found to bring it back home for everyone to sniff.

Would CDC under RFKJnr have arrived?

Those scabs possibly contained the only living smallpox viruses on the planet, except for the two sets of samples kept under Level 4 Containment in Atlanta and Koltsovo. This is the sort of things apocalyptic thrillers get written about.

Smallpox and measles killed more Civil War soldiers than gunshot wounds, and they had vaccination for smallpox but didn't routinely use it on each new man.

lol holy fucking shit

JFC

NOPE nope nope nope nope nope

The stuff people put in archives. A friend told me one of her archivist colleagues found a revolver in this crime journalist's box of docs.

So what happened? Did you have to get the vaccine? Or was is safe because it has been so long since they were taken from the body?

Oh my GOD. Who were they writing to, their high school bully????

Public history FTW!

FUCK?????

Lmaooo

The rest of us should be planning equally funny japes against future generations. No, Trump doesn't count.

We vaccinate some military, healthcare, and research personal for smallpox, but the people we really need to vaccinate (besides scientists actually working with it) are the ones that handle old shit. That’s where smallpox is most likely to crop up.