The Cause of Death of a Child in the 18th Century Solved by Bone Microbiome Typing Using Laser Microdissection and Next Generation Sequencing.

The history of medicine abounds in cases of mysterious deaths, especially by infectious diseases, which were probably unresolved because of the lack of knowledge and of appropriate technology. The aim of this study was to exploit contemporary technologies to try to identify the cause of death of a young boy who died from a putative "infection" at the end of the 18th century, and for whom an extraordinarily well-preserved minute bone fragment was available. After confirming the nature of the sample, we used laser microdissection to select the most "informative" area to be examined.