Tag: smallpox
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Book review: Casanova’s Guide to Medicine
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of Casanova’s Guide to Medicine by Lisetta Lovett. The eighteenth-century Italian Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) is today best remembered for legendary amorous pursuits that resulted in his name becoming a part of the English language. What has been forgotten, however, is that he was a remarkable and erudite…
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Oswaldo Cruz and the eradication of infectious diseases in Brazil
Robert Perlman Chicago, Illinois, United States Photo of buildings on Rue Oswaldo-Cruz, a street in Paris named after the physician. Photo from Wikimedia by user CVB. CC BY-SA 4.0 In 1899, an epidemic of bubonic plague caused a crisis in the Brazilian port city of Santos. Ship captains were angry that their boats had…
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George Crile Sr., founder of the Cleveland Clinic
Portrait of G. W. Crile. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) Early days George Crile was an exceptional man, a skilled surgeon who lived at a time when American medicine was emerging from its horse and buggy period and was embracing the principles of aseptic surgery and scientific medicine. Always full of new ideas, he was…
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Mortality data, risk probability, and the psychology of assent in the enlightenment smallpox debate
David Spadafora Pinehurst, North Carolina Nicolas de Largillière, Portrait of Voltaire, ca. 1724. Source. The present health crisis is hardly the first to provoke significant controversy about preventing and treating widespread disease. Debate over epidemic-related data, its reliability, and its uses has a long history. So does concern about the psychological elements involved in…
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Book review: Viruses, Plagues, and History by M. B. A. Oldstone
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of Viruses, Plagues, & History: Past, Present, and Future Second Edition by Michael B. A. Oldstone. The first edition of Viruses, Plagues, and History was published to great acclaim twenty years ago and has now been updated to include the pandemics of the twenty-first century. These…
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Girolamo Cardano: Renaissance physician and polymath
Born at Pavia in the duchy of Lombardy in 1501, Girolamo Cardano practiced medicine for fifty years but is remembered chiefly as a polymath. He composed 200 works, made important contributions to mathematics and algebra, invented several mechanical devices (some still in use today), and published extensive philosophical tracts and commentaries on the ancient philosophers…
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The global journey of variolation
Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States A human hand with smallpox pustules. Colored etching by W.T. Strutt. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Humanity has eliminated only one infectious disease—smallpox. Smallpox is a very old disease and efforts to prevent it are almost as old. They included a technique called variolation, also…