Tag Archives: Yellow Fever

Philadelphia’s plague

May 10, 2019

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 […]

William Gorgas – Life and medical legacy

March 8, 2019

Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States Portrait of William C. Gorgas. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. The Panama Canal Zone in the early 1900s was described as “one of the must unhealthful places in the world.”1 Ridden with mosquitoes, the Isthmus of Panama was a hotbed of yellow fever, malaria, and pneumonia. Previous efforts […]

Clara Maass, yellow fever, and the early days of ethical medical testing

February 6, 2019

Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States   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 […]

Physician: study thyself

March 24, 2017

Susan Hurley Victoria, Australia   Jesse William Lazear, an American physician who died in 1900 after a self-experiment. In 2016 one man died and five others suffered brain damage during a drug trial in Rennes, France.1 A similar disaster occurred during the 2006 London trial of a novel monoclonal antibody: six men experienced an immediate […]

Passionate medicine: the emotional fight against epidemic disease

February 1, 2017

Tom Koch  Toronto, Canada   The Plague at Ashdod, 1630 Nicolas Poussin Musée du Louvre, Paris Great medicine is driven by great passion, by a sense of outrage at the indignity that a disease visits on its victims. Across history the search for a solution to epidemic diseases has been rooted not in a desire […]