Through the course of this class, I have learned a great deal more than I previously knew about the effects of disease on societies since modernization. While most of the survey courses in the history major do outline the societal effects of disease, most of them opt to focus on the specific historical factors in a time period rather than the effects of biological agents on a society. My own historical background falls under the former, as my academic career as a history major at VMI has mainly been focused on the formation of the modern European political landscape since the unification of Germany in 1871 up to World War II. The density of information on this time period is almost incomprehensible, so information such as the political and economic effects of certain events took far more precedence than did the effects of disease on society. However, after taking this course, I have learned more about the nature of epidemic/pandemic diseases and have truly learned how damaging they can be to societies, even in modern times where medicine, sanitation, and education on diseases is at an all-time high.
In this course, the class began with a basic survey of the nature of diseases and how they spread in society. This survey included basic biology on diseases, such as the shape of bacilli and the differences between bacteria and viruses. However, the most personally interesting part of this basic survey of disease came in the human factors of disease transmission. Before the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, humans roamed the wild as hunter-gatherers, and the effects of diseases on these groups were vastly mitigated due to this particular lifestyle. Humanity faced the new challenge of disease after these developments allowed them to live sedentary lives. Early Neolithic settlements were in close-quarters with livestock, and, essentially, humans lived among their own waste and the wastes of their animals. As such, more diseases developed in these early humans, especially zoonotic transmitted diseases, because of these aforementioned factors.
The first truly pandemic disease was the Black Death, one of the most societally debilitating and deadly pathogens to ever exist among humans. Its origins can be traced back to the Orient, specifically China, where the disease eventually spread westward to Europe with the expansion of the Mongol Empire. Once the disease hit Europe, it spread rapidly and ravaged the populations; at this time in Europe, death was on an unprecedented scale, so much so that religious last rites were foregone in order to expedite body disposal. However, the surgeons of this era prescribed to the miasma theory of disease, a theory which blames the spread of disease on the odors and foul air that stem from human filth. Furthermore, the societal chaos which ensued because of the scale of the Black Death caused people to lose their faith, an important historical development in a time where almost all Europeans devoutly followed the Christian deity. The Catholic Church, the most powerful political entity at this time, lost a large amount of influence because of its inability to quell the rapidly spreading disease. Another important—and personally interesting due to the nature of my historical focus—development came in the form of societal scapegoating in the face of the disease; many Europeans painted Jews as the root cause of the disease and systematically slaughtered massive amounts of the Jewish people. This slaughter caused a mass exodus of Jews to more accepting areas such as Poland, where Hitler would eventually bring the same slaughter to them during the World War II era.
Before the development of germ theory by such scientists as Robert Koch, the causes of diseases remained rooted in the miasma theory. It was not until nearly the turn of the 19th century that scientists and the citizenry began to accept that diseases were caused by microbial life forms. The miasma theory had damaging effects on the treatment of diseases throughout history, and such diseases as Tuberculosis and Cholera were allowed to sweep populations and kill a large number of people. Tuberculosis was once thought to be hereditary, and it was not until the development of germ theory that the disease could finally be medically treated with antibiotic medications rather than isolation in a sanatorium. Similarly, Cholera was thought to be a disease caused by miasma, but scientists like Filippo Pacini and Robert Koch discredited this theory and affected truly proactive change in the scientific community. Germ theory forever changed the way that diseases are analyzed and treated.
However even with the advances of modern medical science in the 20th and 21st centuries, deadly pathogens still persist in the world today. Personally, I found one of the most historically influential of these diseases to be HIV/AIDS. The origins of HIV come from a simian immunodeficiency virus which was carried by chimpanzees in Africa. The accepted scientific theory is that it spread to humans via a ‘hunter’ scenario: a hunter killed and butchered chimpanzees and contracted the disease through contact with the blood of the chimps. Once it entered human populations, the virus mutated into a deadly blood-born pathogen that could also be transmitted sexually. In the United States, the disease ravaged one group in particular: the gay community. From that point, HIV/AIDS became one of the most politicized diseases in modern American history. The gay community was highly stigmatized by society, and American conservatives sought to mitigate the political influence of the gay community and its cries for help in treating the disease. However, the disease eventually spread even further in such risk groups as IV drug users, hemophiliacs requiring blood transfusions, and even in heterosexuals. Despite the evidence and sweeping reforms across other nations around the globe, America seemed reluctant to push for any real political efforts to educate the populace about the disease and to treat the causes of HIV. Legislation on safe sex and drug usage faltered in the American political landscape; to this day, needle exchange programs cannot be funded by the government due to paraphernalia laws and no information on HIV/AIDS can depict or be associated with homosexual transmission. Though developed nations eventually quelled the rampant spread of HIV, the disease still persists in poorer nations in Africa and elsewhere, causing the return of diseases such as Tuberculosis in even more virulent strains.
Upon engaging in this course, I sought to learn more about the effects of diseases on society and to truly understand the historical significance of disease outbreaks. It is not too often that the hard and soft sciences work in conjuncture, but this subject matter demonstrates that there is only a thin divide between the two. Diseases have had an enormous impact on the course of history. They have annihilated civilizations, such in the case of the Native Americans during the Age of Exploration. Pathogens have affected widespread social reform, such in the case of tenement housing and urban sanitation. They have shown society the drawbacks to modernization and urbanization, such in the case of the crowd diseases that rampaged cities like London during the Industrial Revolution. As history continues to progress, the influence of diseases on it becomes more and more apparent, and in the 21st Century new pathogens have emerged that have the potential to possibly wipe humanity of the face of the planet. The never-ending battle between the human mind and the microbial organism rages on to this day, and practitioners of history would do well to remember the historical significance of diseases so as to join the battle.