But the benefits of modern medicine go well beyond combat surgery.

Dr. Margaret Humphreys

Dr. Margaret Humphreys, a Duke University professor in the history of medicine and a fellow at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, issued a reminder Tuesday during a lecture at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh that germs bag a bigger punch than bullets.

“It wasn’t until World War I that more soldiers died from wounds than from disease,” Humphreys said during her lecture on the role malaria and yellow fever played during the Civil War.

Before the onset of modern medicine, infectious diseases had much influence on daily life, even during peaceful times. But it was during war, when food was scarce, sanitation was non-existent and many soldiers lived in close quarters away from home, that diseases brought on by viruses and parasites flourished.

The Bubonic plague ravaged parts of Europe during the Thirty Years War. Smallpox was a problem during the American Revolution. Typhus fever crippled Napoleon’s army. Yellow fever and malaria contributed to twice as many soldiers dying from disease than from wounds during the Civil War, Humphreys said, but malaria was of particular importance to the outcome of the war.

For much of the 1800s, Americans suspected bad smells had something to do with disease. They knew disinfectants made the odors go away and people who were exposed to them and didn’t die could become less vulnerable. But not until the 1880s did Louis Pasteur, a French chemist, raise the idea that microorganisms, or germs, existed and spread disease. It would take another two decades before mosquitos were identified as carriers of yellow fever and malaria.

Until then, “they don’t know about the mosquito,” said Humphreys. “Think poisonous air and bad smells” – and lots of them.

The first yellow fever epidemic broke out in Philadelphia in 1793 and several more followed in ports along the East and Gulf coasts during the next century. In 1862, an outbreak in Wilmington sickened about one-third of the town and killed 446 of the town’s 5,000 residents.

Yellow fever was feared, Humphreys said. About half of the severe cases ended in quick deaths from liver and kidney failure.

In 1864, Luke Blackburn, a physician and supporter of the Confederacy who would later become governor of Kentucky, tried to use dirty shirts and sheets from yellow fever patients in Bermuda in one of the earliest known cases of biological warfare. He packed the sheets and shirts in trunks with the intent to have them delivered to Northern cities, including one bound for President Lincoln’s White House.

There’s no record the trunks reached their destinations and it wouldn’t have mattered if they had. Even though Blackburn had much experience treating yellow fever in the American South, he had no idea the virus didn’t spread through personal contact.

Library of Congress map showing prevalence of malaria in 1870s.

Yellow fever traveled on ships and mostly affected U.S. ports. Malaria came aboard European immigrants and African slaves and was widespread. A mild version, called vivax malaria, came from Europe and affected even areas with temperate climate. The more severe and deadly version, called  falciparum malaria, came from Africa and required the warm and humid climate of the American South.

During the Civil War, malaria raged in coastal North Carolina, the South Carolina Sea Islands, the Mississippi delta and on the James River peninsula in Virginia.

The combination of yellow fever outbreaks and falciparum malaria made the southern lowlands so dangerous, Confederates considered the diseases their secret weapons, Humphreys said. Southerners believed that “when the Yankees come down here, our very land will throw them out.”

But Union troops had two advantages that made a difference, particularly in battling malaria: Up to 10 percent were African-American and had at least partial immunity and the North had unrestricted access to quinine, a medicine that was regularly dispensed.

The blockade of Confederate sea ports limited the South’s access to quinine, especially after 1864, Humphreys said. Southern women smuggled the medicine in their hoop skirts and the South developed an alternative made from willow, poplar and dogwood bark and whiskey. But the “Southern quinine” didn’t work.

Also, the North brought along its own diseases, such as smallpox and measles, she said. And in the end, the Union suffered fewer deaths from disease than the Confederacy.

Today, I asked Russ Williams from North Carolina Zoological Society and the Russlings blog to answer a few questions:

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

I’m an English major from Northeastern Pennsylvania who works at the North Carolina Zoo (24 years executive director, N.C. Zoological Society). I try to stay somewhat current, despite my age (north of 60). For example, I am listening these days to music by Death Cab for Cutie, Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips, Radiohead and Pole Cat Creek, along with the oldies (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Hank [and Lucinda] Williams, Coltrane and Bach).

Started personally blogging about zoo animals and issues about five years ago. (Took an intro course in blogging at UNC-Greensboro by G’boro blogfather Ed Cone (Word Up). Found I was learning much from Google searches, and then by following the blogs and tweets of certain science journalists and bloggers, conservation researchers, etc. (The blogs and tweets of Wild Muse/@tdelene and you, BoraZ, are favorite sources.) Flickr and YouTube have provided much for my blogs and tweets too.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

Had no idea I’d work for a Zoo. (Even named a son Noah; would never do that to someone by plan!) Growing up, I knew I would have a career in advertising, like my father. Did do some retail advertising (broadcast and newspaper) after graduation – early 1970’s. Didn’t like it. Backpacked in Europe for two months. Returned to work with weekly newspapers. This led to public relations/communications for non-profits. This led to fund raising. This led to North Carolina (United Way in Winston-Salem, 1980-85). This led to the NC Zoo Society – 1985-now.

Result: accidental zoology tinkerer.

What does it mean to be the Director of the NC Zoological Society? What does the job entail?

Always remember that I have about 100,000 bosses, in about 27,000 NC Zoo Society member households. Our staff tries to provide excellent customer service to our members and to be their “champions” when it comes to getting a good return on their investments in the Zoo in general or a very specific program, like Field Trip Earth (recognized as a Landmark website by the American Association of School Librarians – one of 21, including Google Earth, Library of Congress, NASA and Smithsonian Education).

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

Proud of my small role in how the NC Zoo and Zoo Society have grown and the creation of both Field Trip Earth (our educational website featuring journals and other media offered by conservation researchers around the world) and Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park (the largest such gathering, offering and breeding of rare and endangered ducks, geese and swans in the world).

Really enjoy helping folks accomplish what they want to accomplish for the future of the NC Zoo through “The Lions Pride“, a grouping of people who have made planned arrangements for their Zoo, mainly through wills.

Capital campaigns, like Project: Pachyderms (African elephants and southern white rhinos) and Project: Polar Bears also meet my need to attain goals requiring some considerable preparation and effort. (I’ve also plodded through a few full, running marathons and to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, at 55).

NC Zoo has something else unique about it – the Zoo School! Can you tell us more about it?

A “magnet” Asheboro City high school, the Zoo School is right on site here. It uses the Zoo as a teaching tool not just to study biology and geography, but for all learning, making use of the Zoo for English composition and communications, mathematics, business and many other studies.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you?

Appreciate your prodding, Bora, to demonstrate Field Trip Earth at ScienceOnline2010. The Charlotte Observer science editor attended our demonstration and the result was an 85-column-inch article in both the Observer and Raleigh News & Observer by T. DeLene Beeland, whose Wild Muse blog and tweets were already favorites of mine, introduced by your RTs, Bora. I want to take in more of the sessions the next time. Only got to one session (other than our own series of demos) and it was exceptional.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I’ll see you at the Zoo soon….and at ScienceOnline2011, of course!

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I have to say that the trip was very much worth making – the exhibit is excellent! I like the way the exhibit is making good use of the space – so many exhibits feel cluttered and an all-out assault on all of one’s senses. Upon entering the room, it looks quite sparse. Yet, once I started going around I saw how much it actually covers, how well organized the exhibit layout is, how much information (including a lot of new-to-me information) is included and presented so very clearly and tastefully, and how much it has something for everyone independent of age, background or interest. And of course – the fossils! Absolutely amazing and stunning fossils! From the magnificent Megalodon jaws, to some of the strangest teeth arrangements one has ever seen in any jaw of any animal.

Then, exhausted and a little faintly from the lack of food yesterday (yes, it was a busy day), I entered the lecture hall afraid I’d fall asleep or pass out in the middle of the talk. I need not have worried – Adam Summers is an amazing speaker. I was able not just to pay attention throughout, I was excited throughout the talk. For a jaded biologist and blogger, when many public lectures tend to present stuff already well known to me, it was refreshing to keep learning new stuff every couple of minutes or so. And not just new factoids, but new questions and new ways of thinking about them – why are sharks larger than bony fish, why sharks have no bone, how do sharks swim, how do sharks and bony fish manage to swim very fast, etc. Questions I never asked myself before.

There were things in there that are outside my realm of expertise, for which I am essentially a layman: engineering principles, a formula I am unfamiliar with, a couple of graphs….yet all of that was made very clear on an intuitive level. How? Because Adam is really good at using analogies (“think of this as…”) and metaphors (snuck into the description without any warning). Be it water-filters, armor, stacks of coins, or houses made of sponges, it all becomes vivid and immediately makes sense.

It is also obvious that a lot of research went into this, yet very few actual data were shown – only the key data that are essential to make the point. This is a public lecture – there is no need to drown the audience in gazillions of graphs and discussions of statistics. The slides, including the images and brief video clips were both beautiful and essential for grasping the point he is making. And then there was quite a lot of humor, mainly of the self-deprecating kind making fun of himself and his students in the context of scientist stereotypes – how they look, talk, think and behave.

All in all – well done. Who ever said that scientists don’t know how to communicate to lay audience, eh?

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NC Museum of Science whale skeletons. (Photo courtesy of NCMNS)

The decision to build Research Triangle Park was made about 230 million years ago in the Triassic period. At least, it was according to the director of exhibits at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. Roy Campbell, leading a tour of participants in the ScienceOnline 2010 conference,  pointed to a satellite image of the state and swept his hand across a swath of green that ran from Asheboro northeast to RTP. “The soil here is just awful, you can’t farm it,” he said. “This is the Triassic Basin, it used to be the poorest part of the state.” He pointed to breaks in the green canopy of land cover, noting where RTP was located as well as Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC State University. “Today there is a think-tank here, here, here and here,” he said pointing out each university. “And now this is the richest part of the state, and one of the richest areas of the nation.”

Poor soil was only part of the story that Campbell shared with his tour guests. Practically running between destinations, Campbell led an enthusiastic tour of the museum’s exhibits, and its collection holdings which are typically not open to the public. He breathlessly rattled off facts about the state’s natural resources and pointed out his favorite details in the four levels of displays and dioramas. On the first floor, nestled below the suspended skeletons of a sperm whale, a humpback whale and a manatee — Campbell’s favorite critter is a small shrimp, a few inches long, that vomits bioluminescent material to escape predatory fish. He walked the tour through explanations of sand dune progression, how sea level rise will affect the Outer Banks, and the stories behind how the museum collected each whale skeleton. “This one still drips oil now and then,” he said, pointing up to a blue whale skeleton whose bones alone are estimated to weigh three tons, with the head alone weighing one ton (alive and with flesh, it would have weighed more).

As the tour progressed up through the museum’s exhibit levels, Campbell shared factoids about the state: N.C. has the greatest diversity of salamanders and fungus in the world; it contains the oldest river in North America, ironically named the New River; dinosaur fossils could be found here, excavated from quarries where the dense overburden was removed; N.C. has the highest mountain on the East coast, Mt. Mitchell, and it’s the state with the most number of peaks greater than 6,000 feet. The tour group peered at a siren salamander that breathes through gills, and a hellbender that breathes through vascularized tissue folds running the length of its torso. They looked into a longleaf pine forest exhibit with giant fox squirrels, a flashback to the pine savannas that used to stretch from the East coast to Texas. And they walked through displays of dinosaurs, proto-reptiles and proto-mammals — all creatures that used to live in what we call N.C. today. Campbell’s knowledge of the scientific details embedded in the exhibits was immense.

In an age when most people don’t come into contact with the out-of-doors as often as they do cyberspace, this museum is a jewel in The Triangle because it’s not only a repository for a catalogue of the state’s natural resources, but because it does such a good job of telling the story of these resources to visitors. The exhibits are engaging and utilize enough live animals to bring out the curious kid in most adults.

But perhaps the best part of the tour, at least to me, was the portion that wound through the collections in the basement. Forgive me for reminiscing here, but I used to be a staff science writer at a large southeastern natural history museum, and I knew from my past work that some of the best science stories come from museum collections and the scientists who maintain them.

Ornithologist Becky Desjardins led the group through the birds collection, popping out drawer after drawer of specimens. Kestrels, perregrine falcons and hummingbirds, she had a story about each species. Mammalogist Lisa Gatens walked the group through  the mammals range, passing around paper-thin hoary bat skulls, jumping mice skins, an articulated mole skelton and pointing out a whale skeleton. She systematically showed the group the humerus, radius and ulna of each species, imparting a lesson in comparative anatomy. The tour ended with a trip to the paleontology lab where scientists knock dirt and rock matrix off of fossils with air drills, dental tools and an array of other tools to expose treasures from the past.

It seemed fitting to end the tour in the paleontology lab. Afterall, it’s here that scientists peer into the fossil record of the Triassic. And it was in the Triassic, after all, that the decision was made to make Research Triangle Park.

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FUTURE EXPANSION, NATURE RESEARCH CENTER:
The museum is building an expansion, an 80,000 square foot Nature Research Center. The new building will house collections and lab spaces, and will be designed to allow visitors visual access to the scientific processes that are usually hidden from view in traditional museums. By bringing scientific research to the forefront of it’s exhibits, the center will function to communicate not just scientific findings, but how researchers come to know what they know. Read more, and see a rendering of the new facility here.

IF YOU GO:
If you’re a ScienceOnline 2010 participant, and you have a few hours to kill, I highly recommend visiting this museum. You can find visitor information here. Give yourself at least two hours to tour all four floors of exhibits. You needn’t bring snacks, there is a cafe on the fourth floor. Make sure to visit the whale skeletons, the coastal plains, the mountains-to-sea ecosystems, and the pre-historic N.C. sections, including the acrocanthosaurus – the only skeleton of this proto-T-rex species on exhibit in the U.S.

{Correction: an earlier version of this post erroneously stated that NC has the “greatest density of salamanders” instead of the “greatest diversity.” It is now corrected.}

Little brown bat showing characteristic fungus growth associated with WNS. (Credit: USGS)

A video camera pans the mouth of Aeolus Cave in Vermont. Limestone rock slabs angle downward into knee-deep snow pack. It zooms in on a handful of bats huddled in a crevice, then descends into the cave. Leaf litter is piled up in drifts on the cave floor. The camera zooms in, and suddenly you realize these are not leaves… they are bats: hundreds and hundreds of dead bats. The footage is all the sadder because this cave houses the largest colony of hibernating bats in the northeast.

This video clip, filmed by CBS news on a Nature Conservancy property last February, was shown at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences yesterday during a public lecture on white nose syndrome, an emerging pathogen affecting northeastern cave-hibernating bats. Lisa Gatens, curator of mammals at the museum spoke to colleagues, students and interested public about the documented occurrences of WNS and the extent of current research.

Gatens displayed a map (below) compiled by Bat Conservation International that shows the range of documented caves infected with WNS.  She pointed out that the southernmost occurrence was in Smith County, Virginia which abuts our state line. “I will not be surprised to find it here,” Gatens said. White-nose syndrome has a 90 to nearly 100 percent fatality rate at most sites. The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission will conduct winter bat surveys in mountainous western North Carolina next January and February, Gatens said.

Range and spread of afflicted winter bat colonies. (Credit: Bat Conservation International) Click to enlarge

The bats that are becoming sick are all insect eaters. The largest northeastern colony is thought to eat two billion insects per night. You do the math. Losing these mammals would cause incalculable damage to agriculture crops and could contribute to an uptick in mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile virus, which infects humans.

A group of leading U.S. scientists from 12 states and federal wildlife agencies warned in a consensus statement issued in May 2009 that the disease “has caused the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in recorded history.” Their statement also estimated bat deaths to have exceeded 1 million over a three year period. “If the spread of WNS is not slowed or halted, further losses could lead to the extinction of entire species and could more than quadruple those that are federally listed as endangered in the U.S.,” they wrote. In the U.S., six bat species are susceptible to WNS: the little brown bat, big brown bat, tri-colored bat, Northern long-eared bat, Indiana bat and gray bat. The last two are federally endangered and all six occur in North Carolina.

The exact mechanism that kills the bats is still unknown, but scientists have many leads. The sickness leaves hibernating bats starving in mid-winter, and non-furred parts of their skin and muzzle become coated in white fungi. Their wing membranes become splotchy and scarred; in the later stages, their frayed wings may appear like moth-eaten fabric. The bats burn through their fat reserves too fast and emerge from hibernation too early in a desperate mid-winter search for food, but they often starve and freeze. One line of thought is that animals experience a chemical interference that disrupts their metabolism and hibernation state, causing them to starve. Another line of thought is that the fungal growths irritate their skin, causing them to become active and wake early, Gatens said.

So what is killing our bats? Why are they waking up? Why are they leaving their caves? A cold-loving fungus was consistently found in association with dead or dying bats. While the species is new to scientists — it was formally described in the journal Mycotaxon in the April-June issue, and given the name Geomyces destructans — the genus was all ready known. Species within Geomyces are known to occur in bats in Europe, but European bats have not become sickened by it, Gatens said.

Scientists are scrambling to determine whether the fungus itself is a causal agent or if it is a secondary infection that invades after something else weakens the bat’s immune systems. Gatens said that scientists at the American Museum of Natural History are collecting “wing punches,” tissue samples from bats’ wing membranes, and storing them in liquid nitrogren DNA freezers. In a worse case scenario, these specimens will provide a record of extinction, but at best they will help researchers figure out how to staunch the deaths.

A few factors about the bat’s life history and behavior may affect their outcomes too. The bats return to their same hibernating roost year after year, a habit that could further imperil their resistance to whatever is causing the deadly malady.  It’s also possible that they may be eating something that accumulates in their systems. Gatens said that summer surveys will collect wing punches and hair samples to investigate if pesticides or heavy metals from their insect prey base are building up in their bodies. The fact that the six affected bat species live more than 30 years, on average, means there is plenty of time for biotoxins to accrue, Gatens said.

“One question in my mind is how their lowered fat reserves will affect reproductive rates,” Gatens said, explaining that they typically only have one pup per year. “They mate before hibernation, but one of their survival tricks is that fertilization does not take place until the end of hibernation. And if a female’s fat reserves are lower than normal because of white-nose syndrome then it’s hard to imagine this would not have an effect on gestation.” The bat’s slow reproductive rate will be an obstacle to recovering decimated populations, even without the added burden of disease.

In the question-and-answer portion after the talk, one museum scientist suggested the beginnings of this epidemic paralleled the historic early stages of HIV emergence in people.  Geology curator Chris Tacker suggested that if all the hibernation sites were limestone caves, then acid rainfall could be channeling a chemical change into these geologic fracture zones, speeding the release of carbon dioxide into the cave air by the dissolution of calcium carbonate. “This would mean that the bats would be hyperventilating all winter long, which could explain why they run through their fat stores,” he said. He emphasized this was just a suggestion for the biologists to consider. “The parallel in my mind is the guys who climb Mount Everest. They hyperventilate and loose lots of body fat at elevation where the oxygen is thinner,” Tacker explained. “They don’t sleep well because they are not getting enough oxygen, and they suffer necrotic tissue losses at their extremities.” A similar situation appears to be unfolding with the bats. The possibilities are endless, and the data is still being accrued.

The first signs that something were amiss came from photographs taken by cavers in N.Y. in February 2007. Since then, the number of affected hibernacula – what scientists call groups of bats that huddle close in caves to hibernate through the winter – have rapidly increased and spread south-southwest down the Appalachian Mountain cordillera.

Toward the end of the CBC video clip, Vermont Fish and Wildlife biologist Scott Darling said, “I think of all the work people like me have done to try to conserve these animals and its being taken away so fast… You can’t help but have it tug at your heart, tear at your soul.”

*****

DO YOU HIKE or VISIT CAVES? WHO TO CALL IF YOU SEE SICK BATS:
NC Wildlife Resources Commission:
- Gabrielle Graeter (gabrielle.graeter@ncwildlife.org, 828-273-9097)
- Kendrick Weeks (kendrick.weeks@ncwildlife.org, 919-609-7605)
- Chris McGrath (chris.mcgrath@ncwildlife.org, 828-683-0671)
US Fish & Wildlife Service – Asheville field office:
- Susan Cameron (susan_cameron@fws.gov, 828-258-3939, ext 224)
NCDOT/NCBWG
- Mary Frazer (mefrazer@ncdot.gov, 919-431-6659)
NCSM/NCBWG
- Lisa Gatens (lisa.gatens@ncdenr.gov, 919-733-7450, ext 727)

*****
MORE RESOURCES:
Fish and Wildlife Service, Northeast Region, WNS
Bob Hoke’s timeline of WNS news
Bat Conservation International
USGS White Nose Syndrome page
Science News story, “Worrisome white”
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Dept of Botany, Details about the fungus
Blehert et al. 30 October 2008. “Bat White Nose Syndrome: An emerging fungal pathogen?” Science. doi: 10.1126/science.1163874
VIDEO: Testimony to House Committee on Natural Resources