LONDON: At a solemn service before sunset in a rural Yorkshire churchyard last week, a battered lead-lined coffin was reburied hours after being opened for the first time in 89 years. As prayers were recited, samples of the remains of Sir Mark Sykes, the aristocratic diplomat and adventurer whose grave had been exhumed, were being frozen in liquid nitrogen and transported to a laboratory with the aim of saving millions of lives.
During his life, Sir Tatton Benvenuto Mark Sykes succeeded — quite literally — in leaving his mark on the world map. As the British government’s lead negotiator in a secret 1916 deal with France to carve up the Ottoman Empire, he laid the groundwork for the boundaries of much of the present-day Middle East and, according to some critics, its current conflicts. But it was the manner of the death of this Conservative MP, British Army general, and father of six children, that may yet prove the source of his most significant legacy by providing key answers in how medical science can cope with the 21st century’s first lethal flu pandemic.
While negotiating terms of the peace negotiations to end World War I in Paris early in 1919, Sir Mark became one of the estimated 50 million victims of the so-called Spanish flu and died in his hotel near the Tuilleries Gardens. Like many victims, he was in his prime at just 39.
His remains were sealed in a lead-lined coffin, according to the customary practice of the era, and transported to Sledmere House, the handsome stone mansion in east Yorkshire which has served as the Sykes family seat since the 1780s. He was buried in the graveyard of St. Mary’s Church, adjoining the house.
Were it not for the fact that Sir Mark’s body was hermetically sealed by a thick layer of lead, the story of his life would have passed quietly into history.
But the accident of chemistry — the decay of soft tissue encased in lead is dramatically slowed — has presented scientists investigating ways to deal with the inevitable mutation of the H5N1 “bird flu” into a lethal human virus with a unique opportunity to study the behavior of its predecessor.
The 1918-19 epidemic was caused by an avian virus, H1N1, which is similar to H5N1. Scientists believe it could hold valuable information about how the flu bug makes the leap from animals to humans.
But there are only five useful samples of the H1N1 virus around the world and none from a well-preserved body in a lead-lined coffin. H1N1 has already been sequenced by scientists using frozen remains found in Alaska but many questions remain about just how the virus killed its victims, and the way it had mutated by the time it killed Sir Mark.
Professor John Oxford, the leading virologist based at Queen Mary’s College in London, who led the team investigating Sir Mark’s remains, said: “He died very late in the epidemic, when the virus had almost burned itself out. We want to get a grip on how the virus worked. At a time when we are on the verge of the first influenza epidemic of the 21st century, the samples we have taken from Sir Mark have the potential to help us answer some very important questions.” Among the riddles that scientists still have to answer is the precise mechanism of how Spanish flu, which actually originated from a bird in France, killed the people it infected, whether by a lethal viral infection, a combined viral and bacterial infection, or a cytokine storm — where the virus sparks an overwhelming immune response and causes the body to attack itself.
Professor Oxford, who is investigating the possibility of exhuming another set of remains from the 1918-19 epidemic, said: “Scientists worldwide are working on examples of the virus from the remains of five people ... so any additional source is very significant. What we are after from Sir Mark is a genetic footprint from the virus at the time he died. It has the potential for us to be able to say with regard to H5N1, ‘It’s OK, we can relax’, or ‘Oh my God’.”
