Digitised Diseases website allows users to see the bones of the past

Digitised Diseases, a new online resource being launched today, will offer medical experts, archaeologists and historians the chance to view over 1,600 bone specimens with chronic diseases. The specimens, currently housed in major archaeological and medical collections across the United Kingdom, include many which date back to the Middle Ages.

The Digitised Diseases website contains 3D models of bones affected by over 90 chronic pathological conditions ranging from osteoarthritis to rare bone cancers, skeletal trauma and tuberculosis. The bones have been digitised using a combination of 3D laser scanning, CT and radiography. The models are accompanied by descriptions and broader clinical synopses of these conditions.

Created by the University of Bradford and Jisc, the resource had access to bone remains from a wide number of areas, including bones from the site of the Battle of Towton, fought in 1461; the cemetery of a 12th-century hospital in Chichester that treated leprosy, and a cemetery in Gloucester where hundreds of people were buried between 1246 and 1539....