Pandemic Histories
Promoting historical perspectives on epidemic and pandemic disease outbreaks
Image: Reach Mom By Lilian Bonin
Recent posts
COVID and our elders: a conversation with historian Megan Davies
In January 2022, historian Megan Davies (author of Into the House of Old: a history of residential care in British Columbia) launched “COVID in the House of Old” — a travelling and online exhibit, in which six chairs tell stories of individuals who died of COVID, or lived or worked in long-term care (LTC) in…
The Value of a Nurse
The pandemic has made visible long-standing and systemic problems in the Canadian healthcare system. It is a publicly funded system, valued and paid for by taxpayers, and part of the Canadian cultural identity. It is also a system that seeks to contain costs and this has been a feature of health policy ever since healthcare…
Diary of a critical care doctor: Preface
On February 27, 2020, I started a journal, not sure where such writings would lead. While I have written many scientific papers and reports, I had never journaled before. This was foremost to build a relative synopsis of the unfolding events of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, as time passed, these frequent journal…
Imagining Public Health in the Early 19th Century
Today, a significant portion of the global population has ready access to vaccines, clean water, and universal healthcare. COVID-19 has, in part, been such a shock because many of us, especially in wealthy Western countries, are not used to being collectively threatened by serious diseases that spread and act quickly. Not so long ago, we…
Diary of the Cholera Horror in Liverpool
It was the year of 1832, May 17th to be exact, when the distemper had begun in Liverpool.[1] The city flooded with concern. People had been going missing, and many had speculations on the matter, intuitively that it smelled like rat. The city was known to be impoverished, unsanitary, and overpopulated.[2] Consequently, this state left…
