How Past Plagues & Pandemics Have Shaped Human History

A look at how pandemics have remade the world.

Thucydides’ account of the plague that struck Athens in 430 B.C. focuses on the social response, both of those who died and those who survived.

Humanity has been surviving plagues for thousands of years, and we have managed to learn a lot along the way.

Some of which may ring familiar today.

Until the mid-1800s, doctors didn’t bother washing their hands. Then a Hungarian medic made an essential, much-resisted breakthrough.

The history of unpleasant odor, or miasma, has unexpected relevance in the time of COVID-19.

A heroic community effort at a daring hospital saved lives, led to today’s ventilators and revolutionized medicine—it holds lessons for our times.

Cholera and tuberculosis outbreaks transformed the design and technology of the home bathroom. Will COVID-19 inspire a new wave of hygiene innovation?

People have always responded to epidemics by spreading rumor and false information, and portraying the disease as foreign and brought in with malicious intent.

John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, discusses what the epidemic can tell us about our current situation and the future.

These letters and journals offer insights on how to record one’s thoughts amid a pandemic.

For millennia, epidemics have tested friendships, faith and society. But, amid the horror there is hope.