Throughout my time in this course, some of the information was review, but a lot of it, such as the specifics of diseases and how they affected individuals and society, was new to me. As a biology major, it is easy to focus on the pathogen as a singularity, but rarely do we start to think about the effects that it has on history as a whole. These pathogens brought about wars, changes in government, and how society was structured. The artifacts we did as homework allowed to me realize how socially accepted and normalized beliefs are the most dramatic contributors to the spread or inhibition of disease. This changed from beliefs based on a religious cause for disease, killing those who the disease was blamed on, and disbelief in things that could not be seen (microbes), to modern-day science, where the reasons behind disease are understood and ethical and moral guidelines and laws are in place when it comes to biological warfare and human experimentation.
Smallpox (Artifact 4) made its first appearance when the Spaniards brought it ashore to Central America. It not only changed the tide of a battle that the Aztecs probably could have swayed had they not been infected, but it completely wiped them out as a society. Smallpox blankets were also given to the Native American Indians to infect them and allow the white man to gain territory; bringing about one of the first recorded instances of biological warfare. Another first biological warfare incident came much earlier with plague, where infected dead bodies were launched over castle walls in order to weaken the enemy’s defenses and infiltrate the cities.
Plague (Artifact 2) also changed the entire social structure of the middle ages. Before the epidemic struck, people were separated into classes. Kings, princesses, government officials, church officials, merchants, farmers, and peasants were all separated by wealth and the status that they were born into. Once the plague struck, everybody was on the same playing field. The plague was rationalized as God punishing the people for being wicked. When self-inflicted harm and prayer did not alter the effects of the disease, the blame was put on women who were “witches” and the Jewish people. Thousands were burned alive as a result, which only added to the mortality rate of the plague. This altered the geographical locations of different races. The Jews moved into places like Poland, which further affected future events such as the holocaust.
Conversely, societal practices (Artifact 1) and ways of life aided the spread of disease. The germ theory did not exist for the first major part of human history. People lived in close living quarters, and disease spread easily from person to person. People also lived in close proximity to livestock, which were vectors for many of the pathogens that caused widespread death, simply because the idea of sanitation and separation of livestock and humans was unknown, as was isolation and quarantine.
Even after the acceptance of the germ theory and the rise of technology and effective health care systems, ethics were not always a first priority. Syphilis (Artifact 3) was a disease used as part of human experimentation. The Tuskegee experiment prevented individuals who participated in the experiment from receiving treatment, which contributed to the increase of disease and poverty in the southern black community. Nowadays, such experiments are prohibited, and consent forms are required for any sort of scientific/psychological experiment.
Through these artifact assignments, I have been able to take my individual pockets of knowledge about disease, microbes, and environmental sciences, to form a big-picture perspective. I have learned how to piece together the virulence factor of diseases and connect them to societal contributions, which, as explained through examples of the artifacts above, has drastically changed over time with the rise of technology and proof of the things, which cannot be seen.
Help Received: Artifacts (and the help received cited in the individual artifact submissions).