Category: Infectious Disease
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A Cold War vaccine: Albert Sabin, Russia, and the oral polio vaccine
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States In the midst of the 2020 Covid–19 pandemic, when international scientific cooperation seems to be the order of the day, it is heartening to recall that during the height of Cold War tensions between the USSR and the United States, collaboration between an American virologist and his Russian counterparts…
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Strange complications of vaccination
In this caricature James Gillray makes fun of the supposed complications of using the cowpox vaccine to prevent patients from getting the smallpox. Several people are shown having cows emerge from their hands, mouths, or buttocks, or develop horns that sprout from their heads. This is obviously not a very safe vaccine! Spring 2020 |…
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Intubation for diphtheria
In 1904 diphtheria was a dangerous killer that suffocated its victims by obstructing the respiratory passages and sometimes required an emergency but dangerous surgical tracheostomy. In this painting a specialist in infectious diseases is avoiding tracheostomy by inserting a tube to bypass the obstruction. He is observed intently by interested physicians, all watching this new…
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How a small town kept smallpox small
Annabelle SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands To make a mountain out of a molehill is a vice, but to keep the mole underground is a virtue. The little town of Tilburg in the south of the Netherlands was not accustomed to seeing mountains, but when a molehill first came into sight, it promptly flattened it into the…
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The hunt for a yellow fever therapy
Edward McSweegenKingston, Rhode Island, United States In March 2020, a research group in China reported the use of convalescent plasma to treat ten patients suffering from coronavirus COVID-19 infections.1 This type of therapy—passive immunization—dates back to 1891 when the German bacteriologist Emil von Behring used horse serum containing diphtheria antitoxin antibodies to treat a patient…
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Vaccinating a young child
The entire household has assembled to watch a child being vaccinated against smallpox. Inoculation with material derived from cowpox lesions was still sufficiently novel to excite such interest. It had been first attempted in 1796 by Edward Jenner, who used the term vaccination because the Latin for cow is vacca and cowpox was called vaccinia.…
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“Scarlet letters” — The depiction of scarlet fever in literature
Emily BoyleDublin, Ireland Scarlet fever, named for the erythematous skin rash that may accompany streptococcal infections (Fig 1), is often considered a disease of Victorian times. Associated with high levels of morbidity and mortality (up to 25%) when epidemics were common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and the US,1,2 it is seen less…
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Cholera in France 1859
“The scene is the interior of a rough and ready hospital; upon the beds are the poor riches in the throes of agony and death. To the left one raises himself, nude and haggard, and howls with insane vehemence; beside him another grows blue and rigid as a medical attendant hurries to his side with…
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St. Francis heals a leper
Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1665-1747) was a Bolognese painter nicknamed “the Spanish One” (Lo Spagnuolo) because he wore tight clothes characteristic of the Spanish fashion of the time. In this paining from the Brera, Milan, he shows St. Francis healing a leper by touching the shoulder which presumably had been affected by the disease. Spring 2020…