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Dealing with disease in Europe
An insight on how disease impacted European lives from 1648 to 1948, and how it was perceived and treated. -
The Great Plague of Vienna
This 1679 engraving of a plague Hospital in Vienna (artist unknown) illustrates the effects of this disease on the European continent, going back to the 1300s. The late 17th century in Europe saw a series of devastating plague epidemics ravage its population, causing over 78,000 deaths in Vienna in 1679. The sheer havoc that reigns through the engraving shows how powerless Europe was in facing such epidemics. -
The Royal Touch
This 1690 painting by the French artist Jean Jouvenet shows the absolute monarch Louis the XIV "healing" one of his subjects through the Royal touch. This relatively widespread practice in the 17th century shows the god-like status attributed to the King in Absolutist Europe, as well as the lack of advancement of medical science at the time. -
Jenner's vaccine against Smallpox
Jenner is viewed as the precursor of modern medecine,as his innoculation methods led to the inception of the first vaccine against smallpox. By injecting a young boy with cowpox in May of 1796, Edward Jenner managed, for the first time in history, to immunize a human being against the disease. This is illustrated by his Case XVI and XVII entries from his 1798 publishing: An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ, Cow-Pox. -
The Third Cholera pandemic
The attached is a map drawn up by the british physician John Snow, showing houses (Dark rectangles) contaminated by Cholera, in Soho, London. This map was drawn up in 1855, in the midst of the third cholera pandemic, that had started in India in 1839 and had caused an estimated million deaths in Russia, before reaching western europe. The contaminated houses in the map are close to the Broad street water pump, showing the correlation between cholera and unclean water. -
Louis Pasteur
This 1885 Oil Painting by the Finnish Albert Edelfelt, portrays one of the most pivotal figures in modern medicine history. Nowadays on display at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, it shows Louis Pasteur analyzing the spine of a rabies infected rabbit, which he used to develop his vaccine against rabies. His most famous contributions to science and medecine include pasteurization, the confirmation on the theory of Germs, and many others, making him one of the most prominent figures in the field. -
The Spanish Flu ( Influenza Pandemic)
The deadliest Pandemic that the World has ever seen was believed to have originated form north America or China, killing an estimated 50 million people worldwide. This photograph, taken from the national library of medecine's archives shows patients being treated for the disease in a US Army camp hospital, located in Aix-les- Baines in France. It was taken during the war in 1918.
