Of rats and children: plague, malaria, and the early history of disease reservoirs (1898-1930 (original) (raw)
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History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2019
In teasing out the diverse origins of our “modern, ecological understanding of epidemic disease” (Mendelsohn, in: Lawrence and Weisz (eds) Greater than the parts: holism in biomedicine, 1920–1950, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998), historians have downplayed the importance of parasitology in the development of a natural history perspective on disease. The present article reassesses the significance of parasitology for the “invention” of medical ecology in post-war France. Focussing on the works of microbiologist Charles Nicolle (1866–1936) and on that of physician and zoologist Hervé Harant (1901–1986), I argue that French “medical ecology” was not professionally (or cognitively) insulated from some major trends in parasitology, especially in Tunis where disciplinary borders in the medical sciences collapsed. This argument supports the claim that ecological perspectives of disease developed in colonial context (Anderson in Osiris 19: 39–61, 2004) but I show that parasitologists such as Harant built on the works of medical geographers who had called attention to the dynamic and complex biological relations between health and environment in fashioning the field of medical ecology in the mid-1950s. As the network of scientists who contributed to the global emergence of “disease ecology” is widening, both medical geography and parasitology stand out as relevant sites of inquiries for a broader historical understanding of the multiple “ecological visions” in twentieth-century biomedical sciences.
Animals and Epidemics Interspecies Entanglements in Historical Perspective, 2024
The first half of the twentieth century witnessed debates on the part played by wild rodents in “conserving” the plague bacillus and eventually spreading it within national borders, and even beyond. This condition was christened by the Portuguese doctor Ricardo Jorge as sylvatic plague in 1926–1927. In the following years, sylvatic plague began to be seen as an important risk in places where an independent cycle of plague infection among wild rodents did not yet exist. This chapter examines three contexts where the spectre of sylvatic plague haunted health officers. Firstly, Angola, where the new concept framed a plague invasion by migratory gerbils coming from South Africa in 1932 and justified measures to destroy these animals. Secondly, the UK, where quarantine measures were applied in 1938–1939 against imported rodents to be exposed in zoos over the risks they could spread the sylvatic plague among local rodents. Finally, Brazil, where the menace of sylvatic plague appearing in the backlands and in the Amazon justified the creation of the Brazilian Plague National Service in 1941, and the deployment of anti-rat and anti-rodent measures in the 1940s and 1950s. Taken together, these contexts suggest that a truly global war against wild rodents unfolded in the second quarter of the twentieth century.
Plague and pandemic: Snapshots from history
Ceylon Daily News, 2020
The earliest records of plagues and pandemics are shrouded in mystery. Not surprisingly, accounts from those eras attribute them to divine retribution, if not to intrusions by foreign civilisations, prejudices that find their way even to modern scientific studies. This essay is an attempt at examining such accounts and understanding in what historical stages such epidemics occurred, from Ancient Rome to British India.
Civilisations: collapse and regeneration: addressing the nature of change and transformation in history, Miroslav Bárta, Martin Kovář (eds.), 2019
In this essay we will first explain the history of the term “epidemic” and its long term companion “plague”. Our goal is to demonstrate that, in the past, there was no clear division between these two words and that modern understanding of plague as a specific disease with a clearly defined pathological agent cannot be applied within a historical context. In the second part, we will suggest three frameworks, in which we can analyze the emergence of epidemics or plagues. The first one is paleopathological (i.e. since what time do we detect traces of infectious agents in human remains); the second framework is cultural (which narratives mark the oldest and most devastating epidemiological crises), and the third one is bio-medical (when was the cause of plague as well as other infectious diseases discovered by modern medicine). The third part of this paper will present a short list of some of the most important biological pathogens (plague, leprosy, TB, syphilis, smallpox, HIV, flu) and put them into a chronological perspective.
Scientists Doing History: Central Africa and the Origins of the First Plague Pandemic
Journal of World History, 2016
* I conducted early re search for this ar ti cle in London in 2012 un der the aus pices of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar "Health and Disease in the Middle Ages." I am par tic u larly grate ful to Monica Green, codi rec tor of the sem i nar, and Ann Carmichael, a vis it ing speak er, who both pro vided many use ful tips and early crit i cism. I would also like to thank the three anon y mous read ers for the Journal of World History, my son Jeremy for his help with the maps, and my wife and per sonal ed i tor, Nancy Hathaway. 1 On the pos si bil ity of a more east erly or i gin of the sec ond pan dem ic, see George D.