we can now see the microscopic organisms that plague us,
today it is coronavirus (COVID-19), but what was it like before we could see these viruses? How
did we portray them? back then, what we only knew was diseases were “invisible,
supernatural, and terrifying.” And so we used representations that fit on these
said qualities, like the Grim Reaper and demons, "Little figures of demons that were physically attacking
the body," offers Jared Gardner. He's a professor of popular culture at
the Ohio State University with an interest in medical humanities and cartoons.
He curated a recent exhibition on the topic called Drawing Blood. "A lot
of the early anthropomorphizations are less about disease and more about pain,"
he explains. "Like little dogs biting our feet for gout, for
example." for more details about this story have a look at NPR image credit: UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library, showing The Wasp cover from 1882 that depicts disease as three
skeletons hovering over San Francisco. The skeletons represent malarium, small
pox and leprosy.
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