COULD DIGGING UP THIS GENERAL IN A LEAD-LINED COFFIN SAVE THE WORLD?
By Michael Hanlon
DAILY MAIL (London)
April 11, 2007 Wednesday
MANY people live extraordinary lives. Many have extraordinary deaths.
But very, very few can hope to save the world 90 years after they
have passed away.
One such man was the remarkably colourful Sir Tatton Benvenuto Mark
Sykes, one of those larger-than-life Victorians who lived in an era
when great men really could, and did, change the shape of the world.
Sir Mark Sykes was a baronet, a diplomat, a father of six children,
Tory MP, a senior general in the Army and a skilled negotiator. A
close friend of T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and Chaim Weizmann —
who went on to become the first President of Israel — Sir Mark
championed Zionism, was a friend of the Arabs and had a real passion
for all things that were Turkish.
His commanding achievement in life was when, aged just 39, he skilfully
directed the carve-up of the defunct Ottoman Empire after the World
War I armistice in 1918 — representing the British government at
the Paris Peace Conference.
It was his hand which drew the arrowstraight lines that criss-cross
the deserts of Arabia to this day, delineating frontiers. Sykes is
also credited with helping to create the modern state of Israel,
as well as championing the causes of the Armenians.
But it was his death that was to bring Sir Mark what may be his
longest-lived legacy. In an extraordinary development, it is now
thought that this eccentric genius may hold the key — 88 years after
he died — to averting what many scientists believe is the biggest
medical threat facing the world today: a bird-flu pandemic.
During the Paris peace talks, which led to the Sykes-Picot Agreement,
Sir Mark contracted a nasty fever, from which he died, at the Hotel
Lotti in Paris, on February 16, 1919.
In fact, Sir Mark may have been one of the very last victims of the
terrible epidemic which had swept the world for more than two years,
the so-called Spanish Flu. This pandemic killed far more than were
slaughtered in the Great War.
Sir Mark would have been just one of the 50 million or so whose lives
prematurely ended (and so often in their prime; the flu struck mostly
those in their middle years), but for one thing.
After his death, the remains of Sir Mark were buried in a leadlined
coffin. This was a standard, if expensive, protocol for bringing
bodies back from abroad. He was buried in St Mary’s Church, Sledmere,
in Yorkshire, and slowly passed into history.
BUT thanks to his leadlined coffin, scientists believe that there is
a good chance Sir Mark’s body will have been extremely well-preserved.
A team led by Professor John Oxford, renowned virologist at Queen Mary
University of London, and one of the world’s leading experts on bird
flu, has applied for permission to exhume Sir Mark’s body in the hope
that they will be able to extract samples of the virus that killed him.
‘We have permission from the relatives. We have permission from the
bishop,’ Professor Oxford says. ‘All we need now is permission from
the Home Office and from the Health & Safety Executive. We hope to
start work in six months.’
It is thought that if permission is given — which looks likely —
it will be the first time a body has been exhumed after so long for
medical research purposes.
The body of Sir Mark’s wife, Edith, is buried in the same grave,
although her remains will not be disturbed.
The plan to exhume Sir Mark’s body is more than a gruesome academic
exercise. It is now
known that the Spanish Flu which swept the world just as the flames
of World War I were dying was an avian influenza — one of the viruses
so worrying to the world’s health chiefs today.
By isolating and examining any viruses still present in the body,
Professor Oxford’s team hope to learn more about the workings of
this virus, named H1N1, and how it may be genetically related to the
current bird flu germ, H5N1, which has been terrifying the world in
recent years.
‘He died very late in the epidemic, when the virus had almost burnt
itself out,’ Prof Oxford adds. ‘We want to get a grip on how the
virus worked both when it was at its most virulent and when it was
coming to the end of its life.’
Considering the 1918 pandemic was the most destructive plague in modern
times, we know little about the workings of the virus that caused it.
There are some poor-quality samples of the virus in labs, some
extracted from the tissues of bodies found in the Greenland tundra
a few years ago. It is hoped that Sir Mark’s remains will massively
increase the amount of pristine material for the scientists to work on.
It is probably only a matter of time, Professor Oxford and most
virus experts believe, before the current avian flu virus, H5N1,
or one of its relatives mutates into a form that is both virulent
and transmissible between human beings.
One thing we know about the 1918 epidemic is that it had nothing to do
with Spain. Instead, it probably arose in the misery and deprivation
of the War, either among American servicemen or in northern France.
Some scientists believe the flu began in the fishing town of Etaples,
on the French Channel coast. There, a huge camp received injured
soldiers from the front.
In fact, some epidemiologists even claim to have identified the
first victim of the pandemic, a Tommy from New Malden, called Harry
Underwood. He had been gassed and shot, before being transferred
to Etaples to recuperate. Thousands of men lived there in cramped,
unhygienic conditions ripe for an epidemic.
Crucially, Etaples lies directly under one of the world’s greatest
bird migration routes, and it is known that the recovering soldiers and
medics shot thousands of possibly bird-flu-infected wildfowl for food.
ONE OF Sir Mark’s descendents is his great-granddaughter, the author
Plum Sykes. ‘It is rather grisly, but it is a great story,’ she says.
‘It is such a shame he died so young. People said he could have gone
on to great things.
‘He was a modest man, but I think he would have been very proud if
he’d known what an amazing thing he could achieve after his death.’
Whether the scientists are successful will depend on the state of
the body. Certainly, cadavers buried in lead coffins can be well
preserved. Some, after two centuries, have looked almost as fresh as
the day they were buried.
It is supposed that a combination of hermetic sealing and the action of
lead compounds from the coffin itself cause the action of putrefaction
to slow.
When the coffin is opened, full safety procedures will be in place,
including the wearing of isolation suits. Nevertheless, surely there
is still a chance that the plague which caused so much death and
destruction in 1918 could escape to do the same thing again?
‘There is no risk,’ Prof Oxford says. ‘The virus will be dead. I’ve
got children and grandchildren. I wouldn’t do this if it were exposing
them to that sort of risk.’
If Prof Oxford is right, then thanks to the late Sir Mark Sykes
science will soon know more about one of the biggest killers of the
20th Century. A fitting end to a very extraordinary life — even if
it occurs nearly 90 years after it came to such a premature close.