February 2023    
         
         
 
     
  Plagues of the past  
     
  There’s much to be learned from pandemics—scientifically, socially, politically—but it’s not easy to see the big picture while still in the midst of an evolving health crisis. So we look to the past. Our ancestors who lived and died through plagues can offer us insights to our present and future challenges.  
     
 
  Plague doctors and the rise of personal protective equipment.  
 
       
  Legacy of the Black Death  
     
 
 
 
     
  Image: The plague of Florence in 1348, as described in Boccaccio's Decameron. Etching by L. Sabatelli. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)  
     
 
     
  The Black Death, a bubonic plague that killed up to 50 percent of the people across North Africa, Europe, and Asia in the mid-1300s, played an important role in the evolution of the human immune system.  
     
  By examining DNA from people who died before, during, and after the plague, a UChicago collaboration identified gene variants that likely helped people survive the Black Death. One of those gene variants, however, is associated with susceptibility to autoimmune diseases in modern populations, illustrating how pandemics can affect health for centuries.  
     
 
 
  A history of health crises  
     
 
     
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The Black Death gave rise to quarantine.
 
     
     
     
 
     
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Chicago used “non-pharmaceutical” methods—that is, enforced social distancing—to combat the Spanish Flu.
 
     
     
     
 
     
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Speedy vaccine development and distribution in America helped stanch a flu epidemic in 1957–58.
 
     
     
 
         
         
    Spotlight    
         
         
 
     
  A plague on all our houses  
     
 
 
 
     
  Image: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, 1562–63, oil on panel, 117 x 162 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid  
     
 
     
  Bubonic plague, cholera, influenza, and HIV-AIDS have “challenged human beings and transformed the ways that we have lived, worked, loved, and clashed.”  
     
  Learn about pandemics in history from a four-part Graham School series by Michael Rossi, a UChicago historian of medicine.  
     
 
 
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