Mackenzie Perkins
May 1st 2015
Civilization and Cultures Reflective Essay
BI245X
Several of the diseases we have talked about this semester have had an immense impact on our culture through the transformation of public health, politics, cultural/religious views, and economies, and the culture surrounding medicine. One of the most revolutionary of all the diseases we discussed in class and read about in our book is smallpox. As I discussed in my ePortfolio entry on smallpox, it is the only infectious disease that has been fully eradicated through vaccination. The idea was to vaccinate humans with a mild, live/active form of cowpox, which allows people to build a strong, long lasting, immunity. Smallpox originated over 3,000 years ago, and was a very devastating disease. Studies of immunity and vaccines developed from studies on smallpox gives us all hope that other diseases will be eradicated as well.
Another disease that was discussed in class that I feel has had a huge impact on culture was the black plague/bubonic plague. Referring back to my ePortfolio entry on the bubonic plague, I discuss several different cultural elements of the plague that were most influential in today’s society. First off, the bubonic plague was one of the first times sick people were separated from others, thus leading to one of the first notions of quarantine, which is still used today. The bubonic plague caused a whole lot of fear, anxiety, panic and prejudice all because the nature of the disease was not understood. In an attempt to rationalize why so many people were dying, since there were no medical explanations available, people looked to the Catholic Church and said it was God’s judgment or the wrath of God descending upon man. People were abandoning their families and friends, fleeing cities and shutting themselves off from the real world. Society at the time was experiencing an upheaval. Faith in religion shrunk after the plague for a couple reasons; praying did not work in preventing sickness and many of the clergy had died from the plague. Economically during the bubonic plague they experienced a period of inflation. This refers back to the bottom half of my last paragraph on the bubonic plague in my ePortfolio. It was dangerous to both produce and trade goods during this time therefore the price of everything went up significantly. Because of illness and death, the demand of workers in the field was very high, so high in fact that serfs were no longer stuck to one owner. Farm workers became more valuable during this period and it was the first time they had more intrinsic power and self worth. This was one of the first times we see the modern concept of self worth originate and it redefined mankind.
The Irish potato blight was a culmination of a biological, social, political, and economic devastation. This disease is slightly different from the previous two because it is a fungus that instantaneously destroyed Ireland’s primary food source and serves as a reminder that diseases don’t only directly affect humans, but they can also affect our food. As previously mentioned in my ePortfolio entry on the Irish potato blight, one of the most central problems was the British policy on landowning, which reduced the amount of land available for feeding the Irish. The English owned the land in Ireland but they lived in England, this is called absentee land ownership and it is thought to be one of the biggest causes of this famine. They subdivided the land in order to have more renters but the families would each have only about an acre of land to plant on, leaving them with limited options for growing crops to sustain their family. As a result, the only crop that could be gown in sufficient quantities, that would provide an adequate amount of nourishment for a whole family, was the potato. Another huge problem in this time were the discriminatory laws applied to all faiths, but mostly used against Presbyterians and Roman Catholics. The Irish potato famine had an affect on America by creating a flood of Irish immigrants into U.S cities.
Religion and discrimination were two main commonalities I kept seeing with these different diseases. When there is an unknown illness killing many people around you it is human nature to become scared, look for a cause/explanation and if there isn’t one then you look for someone to blame. For example, at the time of the bubonic plague, the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church were in charge. When the plague hit severely, people were saying it was judgment from God because that is what they truly wanted to believe. If it wasn’t God’s judgment then it means the church was failing. All of this led to helplessness faithlessness, and eventually it led to the movement of secularism and radicalism. During the Roman fever (malaria) the ancients did not yet relate mosquitos with the disease, so they blamed it on miasmas, also known as evil, bad things in the air.
Severe discrimination was seen in diseases like the bubonic plague, typhus, HIV/AIDS, and the Irish potato blight. Different groups of people were blamed for starting and spreading the disease (like homosexuals were for AIDS, or like the poor/lower class and Jews were for the typhus epidemic in NY). This discrimination usually leads to the rights and civil liberties of the specific group being targeted to be violated.
Every time the class would meet, we would have a chapter of reading assigned to us from our book. Classes most always were discussion based and we would begin the discussion usually with the name(s) of the disease, what type of microbe it is (bacteria, virus, or a parasite), where it was thought to have originated, how it can be transmitted, the signs and symptoms, any vaccines, medicine, preventative measures or treatment available, the influence that particular disease had on its immediate culture, the impact it had or is still having on other cultures, and finally any relationship between the disease and others we have already discussed. The class discussions were honestly the best way to go about examining the social and cultural impacts of different diseases. Having classes be open discussions encouraged class participation and allowed us to share information, ask questions, take notes, and listen at the same time. I think that the best activities/assignments we did for this class were all of the ePortfolio entries on the different chapters/class discussions. Although it was hard to do the entries right after each class, they made you rethink and reexamine the class discussion, your notes from class, and it usually involved reading over parts of the chapter again. Once you write about the diseases you really start to notice the similarities between the different cultures before, during and after the diseases affected them, which is really the whole point of this class. We were supposed to learn about different diseases and how they affect culture, and rethinking about what you have already learned and having to write an ePortfolio entry, really helps solidify that information. I feel like I have gained a comprehensive awareness and appreciation for how these diseases have impacted our culture today. We have really come a long way with medicine since the days of bloodletting however human nature will always cause us to continue discriminating and searching for someone or something to blame if we feel threatened.