Post-Mortem Consequences
Historical practices can have unforeseen harmful consequences, like disease spread from mummies.
The start of tuberculosis in France in a serious sense may be traced to the great importance of mummies and mummy-cases at the time of the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt, and this start gave the disease its first great foothold in Europe, whence it has spread all over the Eastern world and throughout the Western hemisphere as well. Dead bodies preserved in the manner peculiar to the Egyptians of the time of the Pharaohs are undoubtedly favorite lodging-places for the tubercular bacilli. (Text.)