Point of Curiosity: Tuberculosis has a Symbol?
I recently attended a
Queen Anne Historical Society and
Pacific Northwest Historians Guild lecture on the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYPE), which was
the World's Fair in Seattle before the 1962 one we now refer to without qualification as the World's Fair. The AYPE took place in 1909 and was a crossroads of culture and commerce between the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and the Yukon territory and the Asian-Pacific.
Dan Keslee of
http://www.aype.com gave an excellent, impassioned slideshow of rarely-seen photographs from the AYPE. I came away with about 100 questions, and one of them was about brief imagery concerning a symbol related to tuberculosis. I didn't know there was a symbol for that.
 |
Croix de Lorraine / the Cross of Lorraine
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Croix_de_Lorraine_3.svg |
The symbol can be inserted into HTML with ☨ which appears in Unicode as ☨
Other Names
In 1161 C.E.,
Lazar Bohsha crafted this cross for the order of St. Euphrosyne of Polatsk where it was known as a Russian Orthodox religious relic called the "
cross of St. Euphrosyne." During the 15th and 16th centuries C.E., the cross was known as the "cross of Anjou." An evolution of the cross of Lorraine is the "cross of Jagiellons" with equal-length horizontal bars and is a national symbol of Lithuania.
Timeline of Symbol Adoption
1161 C.E.
Made as a Russian Orthodox relic for the order of St. Euphrosyne of Polatsk.
1172 - 1196 C.E.
First used as a symbol of royal power by
Béla III in Hungary in the 12th century. This may have been borrowed from earlier use in the Byzantine Empire.
12th - 14th centuries C.E.
Used by the
Knights Templar in the
Crusades.
1409 - 1480 C.E.
Used as the personal sigil of
René the Good of the House of Anjou. He had thirteen children, three of whom were illegitimate.
Interesting wonderlust tangent... the three illegitimate children all held titles: son John, Bastard of Anjou and Marquis of Pont-à-Mousson; daughter Jeanne Blanche the Lady of Mirabeau; and daughter Madeleine the Countess of Montferrand. I love that there was a guy known as the "Bastard of Anjou."
15th century C.E.
Used to symbolize the
Duchy of Lorraine from whence its name "croix de Lorraine" arises.
1750 - 1810 C.E.
French Jesuit missionaries brought the Croix de Lorraine with them to the New World where it was a recognized symbol by the native peoples of the Wyandot Nation. I haven't found the definitive citation about this symbol and its use in the symbolism of the Huron a.k.a. Wyandot Nation; the original reference is from a book called
The Museum Called Canada.
1902 C.E.
Paris physician Gilbert Sersiron suggested its use in the "crusade" against tuberculosis. This is the origin of the symbol's use by the
American Lung Association and other related international organizations.
1939 - 1945 C.E. (World War II)
Perhaps most amusingly -
interesting wonderlust tangent! - is its appearance in the embossment of Oreo cookies. There's a whole big
conspiracy theory about it.
