Many of Ireland's 'Turk Islands' mean 'island of the wild boar' but West Cork's Turk Island has three graves where sailors who died of cholera are buried

And the body count continues to rise in DI Ray

John Milner Barry, a Cork medical practitioner, was an early vaccination convert in Ireland after he recognised in 1800 that variolation was not effective enough to eradicate smallpox, writes Laurence Geary of UCC's History Department

Extinct strains of smallpox have been found in the teeth of Viking skeletons, indicating disease was widespread in northern Europe during the seventh century, scientists say.