Dec 19, 2025 05:06 AM
(This post was last modified: Dec 19, 2025 05:07 AM by C C.)
Roman soldiers defending Hadrian’s Wall infected by parasites, study finds
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1109924
INTRO: A new analysis of sewer drains from the Roman fort of Vindolanda, close to Hadrian’s Wall, has shown that the occupants were infected by three types of intestinal parasite – roundworm, whipworm, and Giardia duodenalis.
These parasites are all spread by ineffective sanitation, with contamination of food, drink or hands by human faeces. Roundworms are 20-30cm long and whipworms about 5cm long. Giardia are microscopic protozoan parasites that cause outbreaks of diarrhoea. This is the first evidence for Giardia duodenalis in Roman Britain.
Vindolanda was located near to Hadrian’s wall in northern England. Hadrian’s Wall was built by the Romans in the early 2nd century AD to defend their province of ‘Britannia’ from attack by tribes from the north and remained in use until the end of the 4th century. The site of Vindolanda is located between Carlisle and Corbridge in Northumberland, Britain.
Hadrian’s Wall runs east-west from the North Sea to the Irish Sea and was constructed with forts and towers spaced regularly along it. It was defended by a range of infantry, archery and cavalry units from across the Roman Empire.
Vindolanda is famous for the organic objects preserved in the waterlogged soil at the site, such as more than 1,000 thin wooden tablets written with ink that document daily life at the fort and a collection of over 5,000 Roman leather shoes.
The analysis of sediment from the sewer drain leading from the latrine block at the 3rd century CE bath complex was performed jointly by researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and is published in the journal Parasitology..... (MORE - details, no ads)
Pinochet’s prisoners were tormented with music but still found solace in it, a new book reveals
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1109816
INTRO: 110 years after Augusto Pinochet’s birth, Chile has just elected a new far-right President, José Antonio Kast, who has praised the dictator's legacy. At the same time, a new book exposes the brutal and tender realities of political imprisonment during the dictatorship (1973–1990) through the power of music.
Music and Political Imprisonment in Pinochet’s Chile is published today by Oxford University Press. The book’s author, Dr Katia Chornik, grew up in the Chilean diaspora as her parents experienced political detention and exile under Pinochet. She first became aware of the horrors of Pinochet’s detention centres* after returning to the country as a teenager in the 1990s. She learnt that her own parents had been imprisoned in a Santiago torture house known as Venda Sexy (Sexy Blindfold) and La Discotheque, on account of the sexual violence and blasting of loud music which its prisoners, always blindfolded, were subjected to.
Chornik, a Research Associate at Cambridge University’s Centre of Latin American Studies, has interviewed dozens of survivors, as well as former prison guards and convicted perpetrators from the higher echelons of Pinochet’s regime.
In 1975, Ana María Jiménez, a music teacher and pianist, was arrested and taken to the torture and detention complex of Villa Grimaldi in Santiago. There, she told Chornik, she was forced to listen to recorded music: “You lived a permanent torture session because if they weren’t torturing you, you were listening to the torture of others, which was absolutely unbearable. And with music the whole time.”
One of the songs that Jiménez heard most was ‘Gigi l’amoroso’, popularised by the Italian-Franch singer Dalida. Its lyrics narrate the story of Gigi, a serial seducer.
Jiménez recalls: “When they would come to torture you, they said: “here comes Gigi l’amoroso.” They sang the song, and they loved to feel like they were Gigi. They used to put that song on at full blast while they performed the torture.” But Chornik found that agents’ use of this song was far more sinister as it repurposed their slang word “gigi”, which referred to a device for administering electric shocks to prisoners.
As well as documenting the use of music as background to torture, Chornik emphasises that prisoners also comforted themselves and each other with music, took courage and hope from songs, and mounted acts of musical resistance.
Ana María Jiménez once sang to comfort a fellow prisoner who was suffering in solitary confinement after a brutal torture session. She chose to sing “Zamba para no morir” (Zamba so as Not to Die), a song popularised by the Argentine singer, Mercedes Sosa. “All of my comrades had tears rolling down their faces,” Jiménez recalls. The agent in the prison abruptly stopped her and told her not to overstep her bounds “with cute little political songs”. Jiménez refused to comply and was made to spend the entire night in the rain. She later learned that her singing was the last thing her fellow prisoner heard before he died.
In another camp, Jiménez ran music workshops and founded and directed a choir of prisoners. Forty years after her imprisonment, she revived the choir, a story Chornik details in the book... (MORE - details, no ads)
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1109924
INTRO: A new analysis of sewer drains from the Roman fort of Vindolanda, close to Hadrian’s Wall, has shown that the occupants were infected by three types of intestinal parasite – roundworm, whipworm, and Giardia duodenalis.
These parasites are all spread by ineffective sanitation, with contamination of food, drink or hands by human faeces. Roundworms are 20-30cm long and whipworms about 5cm long. Giardia are microscopic protozoan parasites that cause outbreaks of diarrhoea. This is the first evidence for Giardia duodenalis in Roman Britain.
Vindolanda was located near to Hadrian’s wall in northern England. Hadrian’s Wall was built by the Romans in the early 2nd century AD to defend their province of ‘Britannia’ from attack by tribes from the north and remained in use until the end of the 4th century. The site of Vindolanda is located between Carlisle and Corbridge in Northumberland, Britain.
Hadrian’s Wall runs east-west from the North Sea to the Irish Sea and was constructed with forts and towers spaced regularly along it. It was defended by a range of infantry, archery and cavalry units from across the Roman Empire.
Vindolanda is famous for the organic objects preserved in the waterlogged soil at the site, such as more than 1,000 thin wooden tablets written with ink that document daily life at the fort and a collection of over 5,000 Roman leather shoes.
The analysis of sediment from the sewer drain leading from the latrine block at the 3rd century CE bath complex was performed jointly by researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and is published in the journal Parasitology..... (MORE - details, no ads)
Pinochet’s prisoners were tormented with music but still found solace in it, a new book reveals
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1109816
INTRO: 110 years after Augusto Pinochet’s birth, Chile has just elected a new far-right President, José Antonio Kast, who has praised the dictator's legacy. At the same time, a new book exposes the brutal and tender realities of political imprisonment during the dictatorship (1973–1990) through the power of music.
Music and Political Imprisonment in Pinochet’s Chile is published today by Oxford University Press. The book’s author, Dr Katia Chornik, grew up in the Chilean diaspora as her parents experienced political detention and exile under Pinochet. She first became aware of the horrors of Pinochet’s detention centres* after returning to the country as a teenager in the 1990s. She learnt that her own parents had been imprisoned in a Santiago torture house known as Venda Sexy (Sexy Blindfold) and La Discotheque, on account of the sexual violence and blasting of loud music which its prisoners, always blindfolded, were subjected to.
Chornik, a Research Associate at Cambridge University’s Centre of Latin American Studies, has interviewed dozens of survivors, as well as former prison guards and convicted perpetrators from the higher echelons of Pinochet’s regime.
In 1975, Ana María Jiménez, a music teacher and pianist, was arrested and taken to the torture and detention complex of Villa Grimaldi in Santiago. There, she told Chornik, she was forced to listen to recorded music: “You lived a permanent torture session because if they weren’t torturing you, you were listening to the torture of others, which was absolutely unbearable. And with music the whole time.”
One of the songs that Jiménez heard most was ‘Gigi l’amoroso’, popularised by the Italian-Franch singer Dalida. Its lyrics narrate the story of Gigi, a serial seducer.
Jiménez recalls: “When they would come to torture you, they said: “here comes Gigi l’amoroso.” They sang the song, and they loved to feel like they were Gigi. They used to put that song on at full blast while they performed the torture.” But Chornik found that agents’ use of this song was far more sinister as it repurposed their slang word “gigi”, which referred to a device for administering electric shocks to prisoners.
As well as documenting the use of music as background to torture, Chornik emphasises that prisoners also comforted themselves and each other with music, took courage and hope from songs, and mounted acts of musical resistance.
Ana María Jiménez once sang to comfort a fellow prisoner who was suffering in solitary confinement after a brutal torture session. She chose to sing “Zamba para no morir” (Zamba so as Not to Die), a song popularised by the Argentine singer, Mercedes Sosa. “All of my comrades had tears rolling down their faces,” Jiménez recalls. The agent in the prison abruptly stopped her and told her not to overstep her bounds “with cute little political songs”. Jiménez refused to comply and was made to spend the entire night in the rain. She later learned that her singing was the last thing her fellow prisoner heard before he died.
In another camp, Jiménez ran music workshops and founded and directed a choir of prisoners. Forty years after her imprisonment, she revived the choir, a story Chornik details in the book... (MORE - details, no ads)