Calliope articles from March 2001

Calliope archives from March 2001

AVOID FEAR, WORRY, SADNESS, AND ANGER.(health)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... One of many prescriptions offered as a means of escaping the Black Death "ANOTHER DEATH LINKED TO THE Deadly West Nile virus" announces the evening news. Its effect on you is immediate: a fear that maybe you, too, might succumb to a...

`LIKE BLACK SMOKE' THE BLACK DEATH'S JOURNEY.(health)
March 1, 2001... "We see death coming into our midst like block smoke," wrote the poet Jeuan Gethin, when plague invaded Wales in March 1349. This "rootless phantom which has no mercy" was especially frightening for those who witnessed it because they knew it...

IN THE WORDS OF SURVIVORS.(Black death epidemic in Europe)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... The Black Death affected not just those who died but those who survived as well. The Italian poet Francesca Petrarch (A.D. 1304-1374) was devastated by the death of his beloved Laura de Noyes in Avignon, France. "Rarely do great beauty and...

WHAT WAS THE BLACK DEATH.(epidemics)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... IN OCTOBER 1348, GENOESE TRADING SHIPS dropped anchor at the port of Messina, Sicily. The ships had come from the Black Sea port of Kaffa, now called Feodosiya. On board were goods from Central Asia, which was then controlled by the Mongol...

THE MEDICAL RESPONSE TO THE BLACK DEATH.(epidemics, Europe)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... IN THE MIDDLE AGES, PEOPLE ATTRIBUTED DISEASE TO A VARIETY OF REASONS. SOME BELIEVED IT WAS CAUSED BY AN IMBALANCE IN THE FOUR HUMORS (BLOOD, YELLOW BILE, BLACK BILE, AND PHLEGM). OTHERS SAW DISEASE AS THE RESULT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAGION OR...

The Government Responds.(history and practice of quarantine)
March 1, 2001... IN THE 1300s, EUROPEAN DOCTORS WERE BEGINNING TO EXPLORE THE MYSTERIES OF ILLNESS. THEY HAD LITTLE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THE BODY FUNCTIONS, HOWEVER, AND NO CONCEPT OF HOW IT BECAME INFECTED WITH BACTERIA AND VIRUSES. NONETHELESS, SOME OF THEIR...

THE CHURCH'S ANSWER.(plague in the Middle Ages)
March 1, 2001... IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE, CHRISTIANITY WAS VERY powerful, overshadowing Judaism, Islam, and other religions. The followers of these faiths may have had their own explanations for the plague, but the explanations and opinions of the Christian Church...

THE `PESTILENCE' STRIKES EGYPT.(Islamic response to medieval plague)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... The Muslim response differed from the Christian. Rather than abandon religion and religious customs, as did some Christians in Europe, Muslims continued to observe traditional practices. They did not consider the plague God's punishment for...

A CHANGE BORN OF DEATH.(influence of Black Death on European civilization)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... THE PLAGUE OF 1347-48 PLAYED a major role in the development of native languages, education, literature, philosophy, art, and architecture. Before the epidemic spread misery across Europe, Greek, Latin, and French were the principal...

A WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN.(Europe after Black Death of fourteenth century)
March 1, 2001... How the Black Death Affected Europe Substantial changes in population often have dramatic effects on society. The bubonic plague, which in just four years killed up to one third of the people in Europe, almost literally turned Europe's...

Eyam - PLAGUE VILLAGE.(quarantine in seventeenth century English village)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Ring - a - ring o'roses A pocketful of posies A-tishoo! A-tishoo! we all fall down. TODAY, YOUNGSTERS HAPPILY SING THIS NURSERY rhyme. However, in 17th-century England, the children who sang these words knew the true, sinister meaning of...

Legend of Dear Augustin.(folklore of Viennese plague year of 1677)
March 1, 2001... IN 1679, A DEVASTATING PLAGUE STRUCK VIENNA, AUSTRIA, AND CLAIMED MORE THAN 100,000 VICTIMS. AT THE TIME, THERE WAS A POPULAR BALLAD SINGER NAMED AUGUSTIN. HE HAD A SENSE OF HUMOR AND KNEW HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH, EVEN IN THIS TIME OF TRAGEDY....

THE DOCTOR'S MASK.(medieval medical clothing)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... IN THE DECADES THAT FOLLOWED THE BLACK DEATH, THERE WERE SEVERAL recurrences of plague in Europe. During the 1656 outbreak, doctors often wore hooded masks that resembled the heads of long,beaked birds when they treated those stricken with the...

EPIDEMIC DISEASE SINCE THE BLACK DEATH.
March 1, 2001... Although most of the epidemics associated with the Black Death occurred in the 1300s, plague continued to threaten humans for centuries. Between 1664 and 1665, 70,000 people died during the Great Plague of London, and in 1894 plague killed up...

Fun With Words.(etymology)
March 1, 2001... WORD STORIES Hectic The ancient Greeks used their verb exein ("to have" and "to hold") as the root of the noun hexis, meaning something that was held or done again and again--a habit, and the adjective hektikos--meaning habitual. In...

THE GLOBAL THREAT OF TUBERCULOSIS.
March 1, 2001... This section represents a joint effort by CALLIOPE magazine, Partners In Health, and the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change of the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Its goal is to introduce you to various...

PARTNERS IN HEALTH.(infectious disease control)
March 1, 2001... Stopping the spread of infectious diseases such as TB is difficult and often disheartening work. Today, this work is being accomplished by dedicated individuals in universities and community-health centers around the world. In 1987, two...

HAITIAN TEENS CONFRONT AIDS.
March 1, 2001... Haitian Teens Confront AIDS (HTCA) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded in 1989 by Partners In Health. This peer-outreach program helps teens develop leadership skills, discuss HIV and its prevention, confront discrimination and racism, and...

AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL FARMER CO-FOUNDER OF PARTNER IN HEALTH.
March 1, 2001... Why did you choose to work in the area of medicine that focuses on such infectious diseases as TB and HIV/AIDS? It has everything to do with Haiti. When I was 23, just out of college, I came here and saw that that was what most people were...

`WASH YOUR HANDS'.
March 1, 2001... What makes Planet Earth different from all other bodies in the universe is water, and it is water that makes human existence possible. Without it, there would be no human race. Yet, too often people take this precious commodity for granted and...

BOOKS.
March 1, 2001... The Archaeology of Disease by Charlotte Roberts and Keith Manchester (Cornell University Press, 1997) discusses how modern techniques in paleopathology and archaeology are helping to identify injury and disease patterns in past human...

On the Net.(Black Death information services)
March 1, 2001... For a simple yet clear presentation that allows you to follow the route of the devastating 1300s plague with maps, visuals, and an audio tour as well as text, try: www.discovery.com/stories/history/blackdeath/blackdeath.html For an...

CALLOPE's World.
March 1, 2001... The Black Death It all started in Asia about 700 years ago. It came to Europe because Asian sailors came to Europe to trade merchandise, but rats were on the ships and the rats carried fleas that carried the disease. The plague was...