On the tropical beach of a remote island, a group of ailing Europeans was spread across the white sands. Some lay soaking in medicinal baths assisted by local attendants; others dined on a special healing diet prepared from rare, locally-sourced ingredients. These exclusive treatments were not available in Europe, and sufferers were willing to pay… Read more →
Tag: disease
The World Celebrates the First Malaria Vaccine—But Don’t Expect Malaria to Disappear
On October 6, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced it was recommending the first malaria vaccine, known as RTS,S, for broad use. The next day, we entered a University of Oregon classroom to meet 20 freshmen enrolled in Malaria: Science, Ethics, History, Technology. We wanted our students to know two things about the new… Read more →
Echo Chambers
Anthony Antonio has been charged with five crimes related to his participation in the January 6, 2021 insurrection, including violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. His attorney, Joseph Hurley, does not deny Antonio engaged in illegal and violent actions on that day but claims that his client suffers from “Foxitis.” As Hurley tells… Read more →
Assassination as Cure: Disease Metaphors and Foreign Policy
On January 3, 2020, I was at my mother’s house where CNN is her constant companion. A drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump had killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani and nine others. I was horrified and wanted to hear the news, but I was only half-listening because I hate CNN’s so-called analysis and… Read more →
“Our Dogged and Deadly Archnemesis”: A Review of Timothy C. Winegard’s The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator
In 2015, mosquito-borne pathogens caused approximately 830,000 deaths worldwide. Malaria alone killed 435,000 people in 2017. Statistical extrapolations suggest that mosquito-borne viruses and parasites have killed roughly half of all humans who have ever lived.1 While yellow fever, dengue, and malaria have long been the most virulent of these diseases, newer zoonotics (diseases transmitted from… Read more →
Emigration as Epidemic: Perspectives on the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Highlands
In our digital age, the contagion metaphor is often part of the language we use regarding the exchange of information. The most popular videos go “viral” online. We share culturally-relevant “memes” via social media that spread like the common cold. But such metaphors are nothing new, especially when applied to migration. As medical knowledge developed… Read more →
New Medical Tourism on St. Kitts
The late William Halford of Southern Illinois University’s School of Medicine spent his life developing what Hollywood director Agustín Fernández called a herpes “miracle treatment.” Theravax is an experimental herpes vaccine that, in 2013, Halford began testing both on himself and on friends, family, and volunteers. Inside hotel rooms across Illinois, Harford injected Theravax into… Read more →
Climate Calamity: Lice, Typhus, and Gender in Mexico
By tucking themselves away in the corners of beds and the folds of clothes, insects have long evolved alongside humans. Mites, ticks, fleas, bedbugs, lice—they all feast happily on blood, leaving humans with the itchy, irritating aftermath. In the first half of the twentieth century, rural parasitic insects gained a foothold in the largely agriculture-based… Read more →
Sex on the Border: Policing Women in Red Light Districts
In 2001, a Dallas Observer reporter stepped into a shadowy, smoke-filled room and narrowed his eyes to see through the blinking neon lights and deconstruct the American traveler’s fascination with the modern sex industry along the border. The image he projected, of women lined up against a crumbling wall in a run down bar, tells… Read more →
Metaphors and Malignancy in Senator McCain’s Cancer Diagnosis
When my grandmother died from a mucosal melanoma (a form of skin cancer) in 2015, I sat around with my mother and my aunts talking through the wording of the email we were going to send round to her friends and colleagues to inform them of her death. We rejected the obvious line, “She died… Read more →