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In 19th-Century America, Fighting Disease Meant Battling Bad Smells

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

Your Favorite Park Is Probably Built on Dead Bodies

New York City is considering burying victims of Covid-19 in public parks, many of which were already built on top of burial grounds.

America's Devastating First Plague and the Birth of Epidemiology

In the 1790s a plague struck the new American nation and killed thousands. Noah Webster told the story of pandemics and invented a field.

Love One Another or Die

During the AIDS crisis, different contingents of the LGBTQ movement set aside their differences to prioritize mutual care.
Exhibit

COVID-19 in History

Living through a momentus time has prompted many reflections on what the past has to teach us about why the pandemic took the shape that it did – and how we can better respond to it.

In 1918 and 2020, Race Colors America’s Response to Epidemics

A look at how Jim Crow affected the treatment of African Americans fighting the Spanish flu.

How Epidemics Shaped Modern Life

Past public health crises inspired innovations in infrastructure, education, fundraising and civic debate—and cleaned up animal carcasses from the streets.

How America’s Newspapers Covered Up a Pandemic

The terrifying, censored coverage of the 1918 Spanish flu.

The History of Smallpox Shows Us Nationalism Can’t Beat a Pandemic

“America First” is a fairly useless strategy in the quest for a COVID-19 vaccine.

How the 1918 Pandemic Frayed Social Bonds

The influenza pandemic did long-lasting damage to relationships in some American communities. Could the mistrust have been prevented?
Farmworkers in a field.
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During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Immigrant Farmworkers Are Heroes

Our thanks should be recognizing the crucial role they play in our society.

The History of Loneliness

Until a century or so ago, almost no one lived alone; now many endure shutdowns and lockdowns on their own. How did modern life get so lonely?

How Some Cities ‘Flattened the Curve’ During the 1918 Flu Pandemic

Social distancing isn’t a new idea—it saved thousands of American lives during the last great pandemic.
Nurses in masks carry a patient on a stretcher to an ambulance.

Fight the Pandemic, Save the Economy: Lessons from the 1918 Flu

We examine the 1918 flu to understand whether social distancing has economic costs or if slowing the spread of the pandemic reduced economic severity.
Barricades marking a baseball field as closed.
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On What Should Have Been Opening Day, America Needs Baseball More Than Ever

When it's safe to return, baseball can play a big role in uniting Americans and providing comfort.
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To Be Effective, The Covid-19 Relief Bill Must Spark Consumer Spending

While assisting businesses, Congress must also continue to help consumers.
Donald Trump.
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President Trump’s Desire to Reopen Businesses Quickly Is Dangerous

History teaches us that prioritizing the economy could kill hundreds of thousands.

From Noncompliant Bodies to Civil Disobedience

Lessons from Crip Camp, a new documentary that explores the roots of the disability rights movement.

The Untold Origin Story of the N95 Mask

The most important design object of our time was more than a century in the making.

How One Federal Agency Took Care of Its Workers During the Yellow Fever Pandemic in the 1790s

Today's coronavirus pandemic has echoes in the yellow fever pandemic of the 1790s. Then, workers struggled with how to support themselves and their families.
Portraits of Donald Trump and Herbert Hoover.
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Covid-19 May Destroy Donald Trump’s Presidency

Has Trump plunged America into another Great Depression?

What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About

In the literature of pestilence, the greatest threat isn’t the loss of human life but the loss of what makes us human.

The Epidemics America Got Wrong

Government inaction or delay have shaped the course of many infectious disease outbreaks in our country.
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Coronavirus: Lessons From Past Epidemics

Dr. Larry Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox, says past epidemics can teach us to fight coronavirus.
Rahima Banu
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Coronavirus: Lessons From Past Epidemics

Dr. Larry Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox, says past epidemics can teach us to fight coronavirus.
Cars and buildings sink into the fault line of the Alaska earthquake.

In a Disaster, Humans Can Behave … Pretty Well, Actually

In his new book, Jon Mooallem tells the story of the Great Alaska Earthquake and Genie Chance, the woman whose voice on the radio held everyone together.

How the 1957 Flu Pandemic Was Stopped Early in Its Path

Dr. Maurice Hilleman caught the 1957 flu when even the military and WHO couldn't.

Keep it Clean: The Surprising 130-Year History of Handwashing

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

Shakespeare Wrote His Best Works During a Plague

The qualities for which live theater is celebrated—audiences responding with laughter, tears, gasps, and coughs—accelerate its danger.
Broadside with information about tuberculosis.

This Isn’t the First Time Liberals Thought Disease Would Make the Case for Universal Health Care

Lessons from a century ago.

When Was Toilet Paper Invented and What Did People Use Before?

As coronavirus becomes an ever-increasing threat to our lives, there seems to be one thing that people around the world cannot go without the most.

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