ScienceMuseum.org.uk[/caption] Google “gifts for Dad,” and you’ll see things turn up like, watches, t-shirts, golf balls, ties, cigars, beer mugs, and everything in between. Try as you may, however, you probably won’t see anything like these Faberge cufflinks from 1900. Back then, it was possible to give dear old Dad the gift of the Black Death. That is if the Science Museum in London can part with their ownership of Faberge cufflinks bearing the image of Yersinia pestis. Atlas Obscura writes that the Museum has in its inventory the early 20th Century cufflinks cast in gold frames around a picture of the microscopic mass killer. The bacteria is rod-shaped and bluish in color.
By Felix Nadar Crisco - Wikipedia[/caption] Obscura reminds readers that the “Black Death, generally considered to have been the bubonic plague, devastated Europe during the Middle Ages. It wiped out millions of people—by some estimates, as much as half of the population. Many sufferers saw their skin pocked with buboes, swollen lymph nodes that looked something like blisters. Sometimes, dying tissues appeared black. Filthy air, nibbling vermin, and bad luck were cast as culprits of the outbreak; at that point, no one thought much about bacteria. “As the 19th century drew to a close, though, plague was back. This time, it was tearing through China and India. And this time around, scientists suspected that bacteria might be to blame.” During this time, microbiologist Louis Pasteur was intensely observing the micro world and recording his finds. Following in shadow was Alexandre Yersin, a French-Swiss doctor residing in Hong Kong as the area was being devastated by the Black Death. Yersin tried to gain access to the bodies of the deceased but was denied by medical authorities. That did not deter the scientist. Yersin would bribe sailors, who were transporting the bodies to graves, to allow him to slice off the buboes (bacterial growths) on the bodies so he could examine them under the microscope. His findings were later compared to the buboes he found on rats, leading Yersin to the conclusion that the rodents had been the vehicle for the spread of the disease.
Wellcome Collection[/caption] Yersin recorded in his diary that “At the first glance I see a real mass of bacilli, all identical. They are very small rods, thick with rounded ends and lightly coloured (Löffler blue).” Also working on uncovering the story behind the Black Death was Shibasaburo Kitasato, a Japanese researcher. “We have no information to link the cuff links to either men, but they date from a similar period and therefore may have been made to mark the discovery,” states Stewart Emmens, curator of community health at London’s Science Museum.