Jean Paul Marat

[T.Ihrig]

Ok, so Marat had some type of herpes infection that covered his body.
My teacher said he picked this up from hanging out in sewers while hiding in France. My question is did he really pick this infection up from sewers? Or did he get the infection naturally? Jacques-Louis David is famous for his painting of The Death of Marat.

Hope someone knows.

[LGHumphrey]

Stuck---marat skin infection---into Google and it seems your teacher may be right for once.

[T.Ihrig]

Well i hope she is not right, she seems to know everything, that upsets me.
I do know that i wont hangout in the underground tunnels where i like anymore.

[hayden102891]

From what I've read, which I think was on Wikipedia or something like that so take this for what it's worth, is that his affliction was caused by an allergy to gluten. Since it's the main component of wheat, and bread was a major part of his diet, he was basically poisoning himself.

Since bread was a staple, there was no real substitute, and because the disease wasn't recognized for decades after, he never thought, "Hey, I might be allergic to our only food source!"

It's not on the Wikipedia page anymore. Also, this affliction is only recent theory and speculation, so it could be a number of things. But in my opinion, this sounds extremely plausible.

That tunnels thing sounds like BS. History teachers really like to elaborate on unfounded myths about the past, which are usually disproven by textbooks and scholarly articles about the legends themselves.

[MarkMark]

He certainly had some sork of skin infection and the only way of relieving this was to be imersed in a bath. APparently this iswhere he carried out his work and from which he met people. It was not the skin infection however which led to his demise.

[T.Ihrig]

thanks haden and mark for your help.