Interestingly too, there seems to be some indication that those people whose
ancestors were among the survivors in a plague hit country have less
likelihood of contracting AIDs.
Genetically predisposed to withstand the onslaught of disease? Sounds a bit fanciful to me. For one thing, record-keeping in 14th c Europe was sporadic at best, when not dealing with the "creme de la creme" of society; you had a record of baptism and marriage and death, but, most of the time, not the cause of death. Survival of (or death from) the plague of a Joe Schmoe wasn't likely to be of enough account to be "noticed", except among those who were literate enough themselves to put it down in their journals (auntie Bet had the buboes, but they all burst and she survived to have another 10 kids)
And then a lot of what *was* recorded was lost through church fires, through wars, through whatever other calamity (not to mention through the next generation getting rid of "excess baggage" <g>)...
To be sure, AIDS is a modern-day equivalent of Plague (as polio had been once), but I doubt it's in any way connected to the old one. Just MO
----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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