I have been watching tv this Saturday night. I am still fighting the remnants of the influenza, and don't want to go out in the plummeting temperatures. So I have been watching the History Channel and their program on Alaska.
They just had a segment on the race to bring the diptheria serum to Nome in January of 1925. If you don't know the story, which is commemorated by the last 400 miles of the Iditarod, you should definitely go and look at the Wikipedia page and then go to Central Park and pay homage at the statue of Balto, one of the dogs who made that amazing race.
I tend to be drawn to stories of disaster. I have a shelf of books on the Titanic (was traumatized by the 1950s movie about the sinking when I was young; I blame my lovely mother!), another shelf on mountain climbing disasters, and a third on hurricanes and earthquakes. I have only a couple of books on plagues, but one I do have is The Great Influenza by John M. Barry (the first book I read of his was on the 1927 Mississippi flood; I worry about what he is working on these days as his books are so relevant to current events). In it he talks about the growth of epidemiology, and the ability we have as a technological society to understand and fight diseases.
For Diptheria (apparently properly spelled "diphtheria" but pronounced withouth the first h), the disease that threatened Nome in 1925 (and now almost eradicated in the developed world), the great discovery was an anti-toxin that did not kill the disease itself, but neutralized the toxins that it released in the body. Emil von Behring developed the anti-toxin, and for his work won the first Nobel Prize in medicine.
The race to get the serum to Nome in the worst winter people had experienced in Alaska in 20 years, in a blinding snowstorm (so bad that the last musher on the route couldn't see the last dog on his team, the one closest to him), across the ocean ice for the shorter route rather than the safer and longer land route, teams of dogs brought the serum to Nome when planes and boats could not. It is one of those stories that brings tears to your eyes, the triumph of hope and determination over incredible odds. Some of the men, including the last one (whose lead dog was Balto, who reportedly had never led before), were connected to the town. In fact that man had a child who had diptheria, and whose life was perhaps saved by the delivery of the anti-toxin serum. It is a wonderful and uplifting story, with a relatively happy ending (some people died, though, and in fact we don't know how many as deaths among the local Native population were clearly underreported).
Less uplifting is the story of The Barbary Plague, or the Black Death, the "real" plague. I had heard for years that it was endemic among chipmunks and other rodents in the west of the United States, and I knew that it was a disease that had wiped out perhaps a quarter of the population of Europe in the 14th century, and that it was spread by fleas, but I had never really figured out the mechanism of the disease making its way to the U.S. Well, this book answered the question. Of course, it was rats, on ships. But the ships came from China into San Francisco. And it was a disease that spread first among the Chinese population in the city. It was almost wiped out and the plague was fading (it came in 1900) when the earthquake (see? all my interests collide here) of 1907 happened. And then the population was displaced into squalid temporary shelters, the fires drove the rats out of their previous locations, and the endemic disease again became pandemic and the disease spread from there into the wildlife population from which it will probably be impossible to ever eradicate the "bug". The disease was wrapped up with racism (anti-Chinese attitudes). So not as uplifting a story.
Why am I writing this? Because I think that there are some really important things going on in this world that have little if anything to do with politics, and if you are interested in strange things, and pick up and read random books you will learn about them, and they will come in handy. I read Simon Winchester's book on Krakatoa and the next year amazingly was able to go to Sumatra. While I never saw Anak Krakatau (the new volcano there), I did see Lake Toba, which fills the caldera of an even larger eruption. And having read up on the geological processes (in addition to the disaster stuff, I love reading about geology in general), I was able to understand a lot of the geology that went into the subsequent December 2004 tsunami brought on by the quake just west of Sumatra, under the sea near Aceh. That trip to Sumatra also means that I have a picture in my mind as I read about the H5N1 Bird Flu, which is still out there.
Again, why am I writing this? A personal musing, I suppose, as I fight off the infection that has lingered on and become obnoxiously strong in my lungs two weeks after I got sick with the current version of influenza that is ravaging my part of Missouri. I have asthma, and I get a flu shot every fall. But this was a new strain (influenza mutates very quickly) and not covered by the shot in the fall. Influenza is very different-feeling from a cold. And the fever was high, my skin hurt to be next to anything (bed sheets were unpleasant), and all I could do was stay home and not infect anyone. There was no cure, no magic pill. I just had to get better. The Bird flu is still out there too. Still spreading, still mutating. We can hope we have made enough preparations and have enough ability to vaccinate against it that we won't have millions of people die in this virulent strain of disease. But that is all we have, that hope. International cooperation, transparent and responsible government, and some health care that will be available to everyone if they get the disease (and so they know that if they need to they can go to a doctor, or stay home if they are communicable, without losing their homes, their livelihoods)... These are some of the reasons why I am thinking about diseases tonight. That and I am still sick.
Forgive my late night meanderings. I don't really expect anyone to read this, but if you made it this far, thanks for sticking around. The four books I mention are pretty good ones. Check 'em out.