The Origins of Sponge Brain Problems

In Papua New Guinea in the 50s, people who practiced funeral cannibalism would come down with a disease that they called kuru. That is when you get an infection because you ate someone's brain. And it would render them unable to eventually walk or talk or eat. So that's when we first started really noticing in humans this whole idea of sponge brain problems. But don't they make you very suspicious of what the heck was going on in Venice in the late 18th century? Totally. They were both of those original patient zeros were unrelated,. Because one was 1765, one was 1836.