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July 9 - July 15, 2019
Because when plagues erupt, some people behave amazingly well. They minimize the level of death and destruction around them. They are kind. They are courageous. They showcase the best of our nature. Other people behave like superstitious lunatics and add to the death toll.
The past does not exist under a bell jar. Moments, ideas, and tragedies of the past bleed into the present.
No civilization was ever toppled by “too much sexy time”—except for Bavaria in 1848, but that is an unrelated (if delightful) story.
pretending any historical age before proper indoor plumbing was a glorious epoch is a ludicrous delusion.
Galen was a self-promoter above anything else. According to McLynn, he consistently claimed to be a self-made man, casually downplaying the fact that he came from an extremely wealthy family and had inherited numerous estates as well as a stellar list of contacts. He employed underhanded tactics to win debates, and he constantly aggrandized his own achievements. Personality-wise, you could think of him as the Donald Trump of ancient Rome.
Aside from tacitly or overtly condoning the persecution of a religious sect, Marcus Aurelius responded to the plague with the kind of calm collection I think all of us should strive for while, say, on the phone with Time Warner Cable.
When we are electing government officials, it is not stupid to ask yourself, “If a plague broke out, do I think this person could navigate the country through those times, on a spiritual level, but also on a pragmatic one? Would they be able to calmly solve one problem, and then another one, and then the next one? Or would bodies pile up in the streets?” Certainly, it would be better than asking yourself if you would enjoy drinking a beer with them.
I realize that “Do No Harm” is the first rule of medicine, but “Don’t apply human shit to an open wound” seems like a good second one.
Whenever someone begins pompously complaining that civilization is on a downhill slide, because people participate in harmless behaviors like taking selfies or watching reality television, a good response is to stare at them and respond, “You know, we used to burn people for being witches. That’s what people used to do in their spare time.”
To this, you might say, “Well, that’s an anomaly. Why would being a teenager in a girls’ school be so psychologically unbearable?” Congratulations on becoming an adult who has utterly forgotten what it was like to be in high school.
But treating patients unkindly does not mean that a doctor is smarter than everyone else; it just means that the doctor is emotionally deficient. It’s perfectly possible to be smarter than everyone else and still be polite and even deferential—women have been doing it for centuries.
when Cortés’s forces arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, they were welcomed in the way that American forces today expect to be greeted anytime they go anywhere.
It seems that some antivaccination proponents are under the impression that the past was populated with beautiful, strapping men and women who had naturally robust immune systems made hardier because of their exposure to childhood diseases. Those people have watched too many movies.
Unfortunately, this reasoning meant that a terrifying, deadly disease was reduced to something seen as delightful and ladylike.
His examination revealed that he had no fever, no pain anywhere, and that his only concrete feeling was an urgent desire to die. All that was needed was shrewd questioning … to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera.
In any event, his fervent antialcoholism is ironic given that this was perhaps the only period in history when from a health standpoint you would have been better off consuming alcohol than water.
If you have ever read the comments under a medical article online (oh, God, do not, please do not; you will get so angry your head will explode, and you need your brain), you will know that many people think that in boldly making a claim—any claim—their point is proven,
So it seems insane that a disease killing young heterosexual white men in the middle of America would just be overlooked. (I’m not saying that diseases affecting other groups should be ignored; simply that, historically, they have been.)
He traveled in a custom-fitted Lincoln Continental he dubbed the lobotomobile—like an ice cream truck manned by a demon.
Between April 1, 1947, and September 30, 1950, 1,464 veterans were lobotomized at VA hospitals by VA doctors.
Somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of lobotomies were performed on women, despite a greater percentage of men being institutionalized.
In fact there was a senseless stereotype at the time that black people could not get polio. (They can.) Pools were segregated for different ludicrous racist reasons that had nothing to do with disease.
I must conclude this book by writing at least a little about the extent to which AIDS was mishandled, because this plague seems a perfect case in point of what happens if you ignore every single one of history’s lessons regarding disease.
A more compassionate, humane response might not have halted the spread of the AIDS epidemic, but it surely would have been better than laughing at it.
