Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

by Jennifer Wright

When they weren’t busy buying charms, people blamed the Christians for bringing the disease upon the city by angering the Olympian gods. This claim is absurd because anyone who has read D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths knows that Olympian gods’ anger was more often expressed by “turning women into spiders as punishment for describing themselves as too beautiful” or “catching people in a net while having sex” rather than “raining down pustules and deadly disease over the empire.”

“Father, why have you abandoned me? Do you forget I am your child? O, Mother, where have you gone?

Why are you now so cruel to me when yesterday you were so kind? You fed me at your breast and carried me within your womb for nine months.”

“In plague, fear acts as a solvent on human relationships; it makes everyone an enemy and everyone an isolate. In plague every man becomes an island—a small, haunted island of suspicion, fear, and despair.”

They also—and this is where the term beak doctor comes in—wore bird-shaped masks.

The first person who combatted the bubonic plague in any sort of sensible or helpful way was Michel de Nostredame, more familiarly known as Nostradamus.

Wakefield was a fraud. In 2010 he was stripped of his medical license. He was found to have conducted unethical experiments and accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from lawyers attempting to sue the makers of MMR vaccines.34 Wakefield was also attempting to create a new measles vaccine and would have profited handsomely if the MMR vaccine was discredited. He preyed upon people’s fears and their concern for their children in order to obtain personal advantage. After an investigation by the intrepid Sunday Times journalist Brian Deer, it was found that the medical histories of all twelve children in Wakefield’s study had been misrepresented.35 In 2010 the editor of the Lancet issued the following retraction: “it was utterly clear, without any ambiguity at all, that the statements in the paper were utterly false.”

It’s a fine operation and an excellent experience.”15 “An excellent experience”!

The term mad hatters comes from the fact that nineteenth-century hat makers were often exposed to and indeed went mad from mercury fumes.

But Damien is a reminder that you don’t have to be a genius or a brilliant scientist or a doctor to help in this war against disease: you just have to be someone who gives a damn about your fellow man.

If one unfortunate woman must be labeled “Typhoid Mary,” why not send her other companions? Start a colony on some unpleasant

island, call it “Uncle Sam’s suspects,” there collect Measles Sammy, Tonsillitis Joseph, Scarlet Fever Sally, Mumps Matilda, and Meningitis Matthew. Add Typhoid Mary, request the sterilized prayers of all religionized germ fanatics, and then leave the United States to enjoy the glorious freedom of the American flag under a medical monarchy.33 Anyhow, that’s how the X-Men started.

Well, Zimbabwe now has a higher immunization rate for one-year-olds against measles (around 95 percent) than the United States does. So do 112 other countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).37 We are down to a 91 percent vaccination rate for measles, which, according to the WHO, makes us much more vulnerable to outbreaks. That is why, for instance, there was an outbreak at Disneyland in 2014. This is very bad news for people in the United States who are especially vulnerable to diseases, including those with compromised immune systems or babies who are too young to be vaccinated.

“There is no such thing as failure. You can only fail if you stop too soon.”