History of Pandemics

 

History Book Club

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

History of Pandemics

Spanish Flu Victim, St. Louis, 1918

 

Wednesday, September 30, 2020. History of Pandemics.  A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν, pan, "all" and δῆμος, demos, "people") is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of people. Throughout human history, there have been a number of pandemics of diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis. The most fatal pandemic in recorded history was the Black Death (also known as The Plague), which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. Other notable pandemics include the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu). Current pandemics include COVID-19 and HIV/AIDs. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn].

 

William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, New York: Anchor Books, 1976, 1998

            How did the Spanish Conquistadores, with a few hundred men, conquer the Aztecs and Incas—developed civilizations numbering in the millions? How did Cortez overcome Montezuma and the Aztecs in Mexico? How did Pizarro conquer the Incas of Peru?

            How did the religions of the Indians of South America disappear so rapidly, and why did millions accept Christianity?

            The lopsided impact of infectious diseases upon the Indians of South America offered a key to the military and cultural conquest, and that is the key that McNeill uses to examine the whole course of human history. This is the story of what happens when people who have grown immune to a disease contact a population that has never been exposed to that disease.  The consequences can be disastrous.

            This book aims to bring the history of exposure to infectious disease into the realm of historical explanation by showing how patterns of disease have affected human affairs.

             McNeill begins with a few key concepts, and the first is disease and parasites.  We are parasites, and host for parasites.

            We host microparasites—viruses, bacteria and multi-celled creatures. Some make us sick and can kill us; some are combatted and consumed by our white blood cells; and others just hang around in our bodies, not causing much or any trouble, but perhaps waiting for the opportunity to jump to another organism where their effect can be much more dangerous.

            We are also subject to macroparasites.  Once we might have had to worry about being eaten by wolves or lions, and later, the conqueror would allow us to live and produce food, and we’d be allowed to keep enough to sustain ourselves, but he would get the rest. You can see we still have macroparasites.

            In England in the 18^th century many cattle and sheep had been fenced into separate fields, so that there was much less exchange of diseases with other herds.  Not only did this produce healthier livestock, but it greatly reduced diseases transmitted from livestock to humans.  At this time farmers were learning of more productive farming techniques, including growing alfalfa for livestock.  This resulted in greatly improved food production, and humans were eating more protein, which led to production of more protein antibodies to fight disease more effectively.

            Because French farmers had not yet learned to fence off herds, these results did not appear there until the 19^th century.

            McNeill shows us how, as men were able to move more swiftly across the globe, how easy it was to spread germs.  Marching armies were especially effective at spreading disease.  So were the millions making the annual hajj pilgrimage from all over the Moslem world to Mecca, and back again.

            Disease often killed many thousands of an invading army.  When Alexander the Great’s army reached India it was disease, not opposing troops, who stopped his world conquest.

Bubonic Plague symptoms

            Bubonic plague has been a killer over many centuries, but it was not until 1894 when doctors discovered the connection between burrowing rodents, fleas and humans, transmitting Pasturella pestis, that eradication could become effective. The disease spread time and again by Mongol horsemen raiding in China and Europe, carrying a few infected rats in their saddlebags.

            Chinese records show several times in the middle ages when 90% of a province would be wiped out by the plague. At some periods in history there were centuries without outbreaks of the disease, as it traveled within colonies of burrowing rodents—squirrels, rats, marmots and the like.

            Napoleon sent troops to suppress an uprising in Santo Domingo in 1802, but yellow fever and other tropical diseases destroyed a force of 33,000 men and led him to give up his visions of empire in America and sell the Louisiana Purchase to America.

            Until the 19^th century, McNeill writes, cities were too polluted to sustain themselves.   As city-dwellers died, they were replaced by healthy people from the countryside. Only in the 1800s did the balance shift, so that city-dwellers, who had become immune to diseases, made the populations of cities self-sustaining.

            Cholera is an interesting story.  This disease is spread by people drinking the same water that others have used for their sewage, and as cities began to build sewers that transported wastewater to areas where it would not affect the drinking water supply, cholera began to become less of a threat. 

            Note that many huge cities in Africa and South America today lack sanitary facilities for millions who live in shantytowns around the central city, and cholera is only one of the diseases always threatening them.

            McNeill’s description of efforts to control smallpox leaves one’s head spinning, because it starts in the middle and works forward and then backward.

            To simplify, a wandering wise man from India taught the Chinese a method for inoculation against smallpox in the 11^th century.  Inoculation began in England in 1721, and the royal family were inoculated the next year.  This involved inserting a small bit of the disease under the skin, and usually created a slight dose of the disease, but then immunized the patient.

            In 1798 an alert English country doctor, Edward Jenner, noticed that milkmaids, who worked around cattle and were exposed to cowpox, attained immunity to smallpox.  Cowpox, much less harmful to humans, was provided as an inoculation, and this began the virtual elimination of the disease.

            This book, initially published in 1976, includes a new, 1998 forward which discusses the then newest epidemic, that of AIDS.

            McNeill’s view of the human situation isn’t all that encouraging. We face microparasites within and macroparasites above, around and beyond.  As soon as we become immune to smallpox or clean up our lives to protect against cholera, along comes AIDS, Ebola, or Zika; or a new macroparasite like a new tax, or a higher rent, or some other problem. 

            What do you think McNeill would have said about the Covid19 pandemic, and the way nations handled it?

Author: William Hardy McNeill (October 31, 1917 – July 8, 2016) was a historian and author, noted for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward, first postulated in The Rise of the West (1963). He served in U.S. Army 1941-45. He was the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1947 until his retirement in 1987.

 

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HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2020-2021

The Chicago Tribune thought Dewey would win in 1948

Wednesday, October 28, 2020. Unique Elections in American History. The forthcoming election may seem the most unique, but this month we will look back at past elections.  Select any that you find interesting.  For instance: Election of 1828: Andrew Jackson vs. John Quincy Adams; Election of 1840: William Henry Harrison vs. Martin Van Buren; Election of 1860: Abraham Lincoln vs. Stephen Douglas vs. John C. Breckinridge vs. John Bell; Election of 1864 : Abraham Lincoln vs. George B. McClellan; Election of 1884: Grover Cleveland vs. James G. Blaine; Election of 1912: Woodrow Wilson vs. William Howard Taft vs. Theodore Roosevelt vs. Eugene V. Debs; Election of 1948: Harry Truman vs. Thomas E. Dewey vs. Strom Thurmond vs. Henry Wallace. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]

Gloucester Dorymen

Wednesday, November 25, 2020. Gloucester and the Sea.  euser]

Gloucester has throughout four centuries cast its lot with the North Atlantic, remaining a maritime port for better or worse. The maritime culture of Cape Ann is the mix of a noble maritime heritage; ubiquitous sea influences that reach as far as the quarries behind Rockport and into the haunted tracks of Dogtown Common; seductive but capricious natural splendors; and untidy independence that repels some but converts other visitors into lifetime devotees. Read any book about the maritime history of Gloucester and Cape Ann. [Suggested by Richard Verrengia] 

There will be no meeting in December

2021

Augustus Caesar (09-23-63BC-08-19AD)

Wednesday, January 27, 2021. The Empire of “United” Rome. Over the years and then the centuries, much of Rome's population came from outside Italy -- this even included some of the later emperors, such as Hadrian, who was Spanish, and writers like Columella, Seneca, and Martial, also Spanish-born. Celts, Arabs, Jews, and Greeks, among others, were included under the wide umbrella of Romanitas. This was the inevitable result of an imperial system that constantly expanded and frequently accepted the peoples of conquered countries as Roman citizens. Not until the end of the first century B.C.E., with the reign of Augustus, do we begin to see signs of a distinctively 'Roman' art, an identifiably 'Roman' cultural ideal. Read any book on the origin or life of Rome, from Romulus and Remus to Augustus.  [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]

Wednesday, February 24, 2021. Send us your suggestion!