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If I had chosen a field related to medicine and public health, it should have been epidemiology. Detecting patterns, solving mysteries, analyzing maps, tracing history: What could be more fun?
People must always have noticed some diseases spread from person to person. The word quarantine comes from Italian for forty days, the time Venice made ships from infected ports sit at anchor before anyone got off. Romeo and Juliet could have had a happy ending if no one thought a house with the plague had to be boarded up. Collecting and mapping data has been a basic tool of epidemiology since the 1850s, when John Snow painstakingly traced a London cholera epidemic to one infected well. I highly recommend Steven Berlin Johnson’s engaging account, The Ghost Map. With the additional tool of genetic analysis, disease detectives can compare cases of an infection to determine the route it traveled. That’s how epidemiologists discovered coronavirus came to New York primarily from Europe, not China. Clues, suspects, red herrings—these sleuths have it all.
3 Comments
Interesting that you like the sleuthing about where it spread, and following it to stop the contagion. I think I would like to help with the media campaign to convince people to comply with mask wearing and staying home, or train dogs to sniff out Covid-19. To each her own. All work for the cause is good work. : ) R 8/4/2020 07:16:19 am
You would be excellent with the media campaign - the words, the visuals, and the strategy. Love the dog training idea! For me, history and geography and exploration have always called loudly. Isn't a good thing we humans have such varied interests and skills? 10/17/2020 06:31:17 am
I absolutely agree! I think it is a good thing that humans have different areas of interests and set of skills. If we focus on one aspect alone, we would miss out on a lot of things that may be useful for us to cure other illnesses. It is amazing how there are so many fields in the medical industry that people can excel in. As years go by, we keep on discovering more and more ways on how we can preserve human life. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. Archives
September 2023
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