Kristina Killgrove is an archaeologist with specialties in ancient human skeletons and science communication. Her academic research has appeared in numerous scientific journals, while her news stories and essays have been published in venues such as Forbes, Mental Floss and Smithsonian.
About 100 years ago, a woman at Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum died with a condition so rare, it puzzled modern-day archaeologists who were excavating the asylum's unmarked graves.
The preserved organ, often called a porcelain gallbladder in the medical literature, was associated with the skeleton of a middle-aged woman who was buried in the asylum's cemetery. Founded in 1855 and closed in 1935, the asylum treated tens of thousands of patients, around 7,000 of whom died while in residence and were buried in simple pine boxes with wooden markers.
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.In modern medical studies, porcelain gallbladder is considered a rare condition resulting from chronic inflammation of the organ, a disease called cholecystitis. The exact reason that porcelain gallbladder forms is unknown, but it is clear that the wall of the organ mineralizes. People with this condition are usually asymptomatic, and it affects women five times more than men.
Within the first 100 burials recovered by the Asylum Hill Project, the researchers noted in their study, they found five people with gallstones in addition to the woman with porcelain gallbladder."The apparent high proportion of asylum patients with cholecystitis is coincidental," they wrote,"as there is no association between gallbladder disease and mental illness or physiological diseases causing neuropsychiatric symptoms.
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