Tag: Infectious Diseases
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The Schoolhouse Lab
Edward McSweeganKingston, Rhode Island, United States “Black measles” was a common name for spotted fever, which regularly killed people in the western United States. Symptoms included a spotty rash on the extremities, fever, chills, headache, and photophobia. No one knew what caused it. The first recorded case in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley was in 1873.1 Twenty-three…
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How a small town kept smallpox small
Annabelle Slingerland Leiden, the Netherlands Fig. 1 Presentation of smallpox. 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…
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Ebola on this side
Elisabeth Preston-Hsu Atlanta, Georgia, United States “Ebola in the Dark.” Drawing by Elisabeth Preston-Hsu, 2019, private collection In September 2014, my husband Chris boarded a plane from Atlanta, Georgia for the Democratic Republic of Congo, his first trip to Africa for work. We had just moved back to Atlanta two months before when he…
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Philadelphia’s plague
Hayat El Boukari Tetouan, Morocco Four plates showing the development of yellow fever. From the title: Observations sur la fièvre jaune, faites à Cadix, en 1819 / par MM. Pariset et Mazet. Authors: Etienne Pariset (1770-1847) and André Mazet (1793-1821). Wellcome Collection. Public domain. “A narrative of the proceedings of the black people, during the…
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The forgotten many of the Guatemalan Syphilis Experiments
Harsh Patolia Roanoke, Virginia, United States 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…
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Preparing for a zombie apocalypse
Larry KerrCarlisle, Pennsylvania, United States What can we learn from a Zombie Apocalypse? The first thing to learn? It could happen. Anyone who has been on this earth for a length of time knows that when a person says something cannot possibly happen, it almost certainly will. Even more worrisome is the disclaimer that if…
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Anasplasmosis: what we can learn from Lam’s surrealistic animalarium
José de la FuenteCiudad Real, Spain Epidemiology and art have met several times, but what can we learn from the surrealistic animalarium? Several of the surrealist artists used animals as symbols. However, in some cases they also provided compositions that are relevant for the study of infectious diseases. Anaplasmosis is one of the major tick-borne…
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Jewish ritual immersion in the mikveh and the concept of communal immunity
Robert Stern Piotr Kozlowski David Forstein New York City, New York, United States Figure 1. Mikveh in Palestine from the Biblical era The mikveh may be seen as part of the sociobiological process assuring the gradual cross exposure of community members to the biomes of other members. It also provides controlled exposure to the biomes…
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Bugs and people: When epidemics change history
Salvatore Mangione Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Albrecht Dürer, woodcut, c.1496–8 From left to right, Death (with a trident), Famine (with scales), War (with a sword) and Plague (with the arrows of pestilence) are crushing under their horses’ hooves all those unfortunate enough to stand in their wake. In…