Case file · High strangeness
Kuru, the 'sorcery' that was a prion
The Fore people of the Okapa area blamed kuru, a fatal trembling disease, on sorcery; from 1957 Carleton Gajdusek and Vincent Zigas investigated it and it was later shown to be a prion disease spread by funerary cannibalism.
1957 CE · -6.58, 145.58 · status: explained
The account
Women and children, who ate the brains of dead relatives in mourning rites, were most affected. Gajdusek shared the 1976 Nobel Prize for the work. Cases declined after the rites ended in the 1950s.