While identifying a new disease by its place of origin seems intuitive, history shows that doing so can have serious consequences for the people that live there.
We’ve known how to control typhoid for over 100 years. The rapid current increase of drug-resistant variants in both rich and poor countries is down to decades of short-sighted global health policies.
Fear of a disease that seemed to turn people into beasts might have inspired belief in supernatural beings that live on in today’s creepy Halloween costumes.
Hernán Cortés owed his conquest of the Aztecs to his expedition’s unknown, unseen secret weapon: the smallpox virus. Disease epidemics can set the course of human history.
Laura Sumrall, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Reports of demonic possession are once again on the rise. But during the devil’s last apogee in early modern Europe, demonic afflictions were taken seriously by both priests and physicians.
Indonesia’s physicians were active in the nationalist movement. They were involved in associations and political parties. They also became authors and activists.