Did Macbeth have syphilis?
Eleanor J. Molloy Dublin, Ireland Gerard De Lairesse suffered from congenital syphilis. Image: Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse. Rembrandt van Rijn. 1665–67. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain. Introduction Syphilis was endemic in Elizabethan England and it was estimated that nearly 20% of the population of London were infected.1 The signs and symptoms […]
Fleas in art and medicine
Fleas cause itching and red bite marks on their hosts but are nowadays mainly a nuisance. This was not always so. In the Middle Ages they spread bubonic plague from rats to man, causing the Black Death epidemics that killed 25 million people—up to 50% of the Europe’s population. They also transmit the agents causing […]
Lady Mary Wortley Montague: variolation against smallpox
Born in 1689, Lady Mary Wortley Montague was the most colorful Englishwoman of her time—an eccentric aristocrat, writer, and poet. In 1715 while still a young woman, her beauty was marred by a severe attack of smallpox. She had eloped in 1710 rather than accept an arranged marriage, and in 1715 her husband became British […]
Daniel Carrion and his disease
In 1879 an armed conflict known as the War of the Pacific broke out between three South American nations, pitting Chile against a Peruvian-Bolivian alliance in a dispute over land rich in minerals, especially sodium nitrate. The Chileans defeated their adversaries by land and sea, their armies invading Peru, occupying Lima, eventually annexing valuable territory […]
Quinine and the cinchona plant: gain or bane for Africa?
Lom Bryan-Bill Ning Bamenda, Republic of Cameroon Slave Market. Frederic Remington. 1893. The Art Institute of Chicago. “The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives and minds than all doctors in the Empire.”1 This statement by Winston Churchill referred to the bitter-tasting substance in tonic water, quinine. This antimalarial alkaloid did save lives, […]
Philadelphia’s plague
Hayat El Boukari Tetouan, Morocco On August 3, 1793, a young French sailor rooming at Richard Denney’s boarding house on north Water Street in Philadelphia was desperately ill with a fever. Eighteenth century record keeping was not very precise, no one bothered to write down his name, and he was a poor foreigner and […]
Not all heroes wear capes
Cross De Idialu Port Harcourt, Nigeria Symptoms of Ebola. Illustration by Mikael Häggström. August 2, 2014. by Mikael Häggström. August 2, 2014. Public Domain, It was the year 2014, and an unknown deadly disease was eating deep into the western region of the African continent. The first case was said to have occurred on […]
The forgotten many of the Guatemalan Syphilis Experiments
Harsh Patolia Roanoke, Virginia, USA Inoculation site of participant. Image from the Records of Dr. John C. Cutler housed in the National Archives. In 2005, medical historian Dr. Susan Reverby foraged through boxes in the stuffy archives of the library of the University of Pittsburgh for the papers of Thomas Parran, the surgeon general […]
Preparing for a zombie apocalypse
Larry Kerr Carlisle, PA, USA Pieter Bruegel the Elder created this apocalyptic view of a world in 1562 unprepared to handle a pandemic. The painting has been in Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1827. What can we learn from a Zombie Apocalypse? The first thing to learn? It could happen. Anyone who has […]
Clara Maass, yellow fever, and the early days of ethical medical testing
Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, USA Clara Louise Maass portrait. Credit: National Museum of Health and Medicine. CC BY 2.0. Clara Maass was born on June 28, 1876, in the quiet New Jersey township of East Orange. The oldest daughter of Hedwig and Robert E. Maass, she grew up helping to raise and provide for […]