2013 Review of Speaking of Epidemics by Joanna Grant in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine (original) (raw)
Epidemics and Pandemics -the Historical Perspective. Introduction
Historical Social Research Supplement 33 (2021): 7-33., 2021
»Epidemien und Pandemien-die historische Perspektive. Einleitung«. Every historical period has its characteristic epidemic. In the Middle Ages, up to one-third of the European population died of the plague epidemic called the Black Death (1346 to 1353). Later, cholera, Spanish flu, and AIDS terrified the population. Every epidemic triggered social changes and functioned as a catalyst for developments, which were already taking place. In addition to the often-devastating impact on life and health, epidemics and pandemics hold potential for innovations. The Black Death certainly led to a rising standard of living and is even said to have accelerated the development of printing. In the 19th century, cholera was considered to be a motor of sanitary reforms, such as central water supply and sewerage. The current Sars-CoV-2 pandemic clearly shows that epidemics are still part of human history and not just, as has long been believed, limited to the Global South.
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.
Medicine in Philately: Pandemics from past to present
Anadolu kliniği tıp bilimleri dergisi, 2022
Aim: There have been many pandemics that have left deep traces in human history. Many pandemics have caused crises in societies and negative consequences on health, the economy, social, and global security. Pandemics are foreseen to exist in the future as they have in the past and present. Therefore, examining past pandemics can serve to better understand, analyze and manage future pandemic processes. From this point of view, this article aims to emphasize past pandemics through philately medicine, draw attention to possible pandemics in the future, and raise awareness about the precautions to be taken. Methods: This article aims to describe the discovery and development of pandemics around the world through historical stamps, postal history, and other related items. Philately is the study of stamps, postal history, and other related items. But philately is much more than stamp collecting. Philately involves the study of the design and educational impact of the material. This article presents the history of medicine stamps produced worldwide from the past to the present to highlight the history of the pandemic. The stamp captions are based on a scan of the 6-volume Scott Catalog of Standard Postage Stamps (2017). The copyright of the stamps used in the article belongs to the philatelist author Results: This article presents pandemic stamps produced worldwide between 1962 and 2020. In the article, a total of 17 philatelic materials (historical stamps) are presented on the subject of describing the prehistoric life of people, infectious diseases that cause pandemics, transmission routes of epidemics, prevention, treatment approaches, losses in pandemics and struggles against pandemics. Conclusion: This research provides an overview of the development and history of pandemics around the world, using philatelic medicine materials produced worldwide during pandemics from the past to the present.
Divergent stories? Narrating ancient and current reactions to pandemics
Horitzó. Revista de ciències de la religió 5, 2024, pp. 67-79, 2024
Although this recent COVID virus is new, it is well known that this pandemic, in its medical characteristics, in its impact on the population and even in its social and economic repercussions, is nothing new. There is a long tradition of previous pandemics that have affected Western culture and have left literary footprints over the centuries. Pandemics generally share common features: the description of the symptoms, the response of the authorities, even the lockdown of the population, are recurring, and help us to see the current situation with some perspective. However, despite the similarities in the way illness has been metaphorized over the centuries, the divergences are particularly striking: while in ancient and medieval literary accounts illness is seen, in a metaphorical reading, as a moral, social and natural disorder as a whole, and the reaction of the majority of society is always a moral upheaval that leads to the loss of religious and ethical values, in current accounts, the media narrative emphasises shared feelings, popular gestures, and hopeful mimetism that have occurred all over the world. As a result, our civic values and religious belief systems, far from weakening, have been even strengthened. In order to clearly delineate an area for analysis, I will mainly focus on the social reactions to the pandemics described by Thucydides (5th century BC) and by Procopius of Caesarea (6th century AD) and contrast them with social reactions during the current pandemic, especially through media narratives such as news reports and political slogans. I will try to establish the devices in constructing of a story about the pandemic in each cultural context, and to illustrate how the ancient metaphors can be used to better understand the collective story of the current pandemic.
A Historical Exploration of Pandemics of Some Selected Diseases in the World
A pandemic is an epidemic occurring on a scale which crosses international boundaries, usually affecting a large number of people. In a simple way a pandemic is an epidemic with higher magnitude in terms of geographical area, number of cases and days of suffering resulting in disabilities or deaths. Human population have suffered from many pandemics throughout history be it the earlier form of smallpox or tuberculosis or the recent incidence of HIV/AIDS or H1N1. It has created catastrophic damage in many different forms. Public health around the globe is improving by leaps and bound but the occurrence of a pandemic is not always unexpected. The epidemiological transition in different form may be one of the important factors for such incidents in and around the globe. In this paper an attempt has been made to explore historically some calendar of events of some selected pandemics around the globe.
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.
Epidemics and Infections in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Social History of Medicine, 2008
for their responses to our 'Second Opinion' on 'Infectious Disease and the Epidemiological Transition in Victorian Britain'. 1 Mooney offers a robust attack on our general claim that the importance of infectious diseases as a cause of death in the nineteenth century has been overstated, while seeming to accept what we say about epidemics, while Noymer and Jarosz take us to task on what counts as an infectious disease and also provide a critique of the specific limitations of our claims when applied to New England. We are pleased that our piece generated such reactions and hope that the debate will continue. Mooney was mightily offended by our apparent neglect of the work of historical demographers, and on reflection we regret not giving this aspect more attention, including the excellent articles and chapters that Mooney has published over the years. 2 For this, we apologise. However, historical demographers were not our target, for we are well aware of the work they have done and the nuanced picture they have now presented of changes in mortality patterns; indeed, we would have been unable to present our piece without this work. That said, one of our key points was that the complex picture they have produced has yet to find its way into mainstream social and economic history books, or popular understandings of Victorian Britain. Why this is so we can only speculate. Part of the reason may be that the work of historical demographers, with very notable exceptions, such as that of Wrigley, Schofield and Woods, has not been accessible to less numerate colleagues, who seem to prefer dramatic contrasts between disease and death