By Karli Korszeniewski
Research in epidemiology hasn’t adequately considered the “narrativity” of infectious diseases—the way their representation shapes how society views them — which became particularly important during the recent pandemic, says Andreas Bernard, a visiting professor in UC Santa Barbara’s department of Germanic and Slavic Studies.
“What all these studies don’t mention, or only implicitly at least, is the significance of the narrativity of infectious diseases,” Bernard said. “And the effect that, I think, has also shaped our experience in the last four years.”
Bernard is visiting from Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany and recently gave a talk titled “The Chain of Infections: Narratives of the Epidemic since the 19th Century,” based on his most recent book, published last November. The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and the Comparative Literature Program co-sponsored the event.
He said the ‘chain of infection,’ metaphor describes contagion as a series of individual infections, from link to link, person to person, that must be interrupted by epidemiological measures such as isolation, vaccination, or immunization.
Bernard is also the author of “Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator,” and “ The Triumph of Profiling: The Self in Digital Culture ,” as well as “Theory of the Hashtag.”
Andreas Bernard, visiting professor in UCSB’s department of German and Slavic Studies discussing the history of epidemics.
His most recent book isn’t focused on the coronavirus; only about eight pages mention the latest global pandemic. But he felt inspired to write about the history of previous epidemics by the news coverage in Germany during the spring of 2020, when infection rates took center stage in national and local media.
He said there are two schools in epidemiology’s history: contagion and miasma, both originating in the 19th century. Contagionists believed tiny invisible germs that traveled from person to person were the cause of infection, whereas the miasma theory assumed the atmosphere spread a toxic vapor or mist.
Bernard explained that the miasmic, or environmental, model was considered more modern in the first two-thirds of the 19th century. Study material from Berlin and Paris yielded a long series of statistics that researchers believed identified causes of a toxic vapor by way of classifying the dead and sick.
Data were analyzed by neighborhoods, residential areas, gender, occupation, age, and even by days of the week. “Monday was always diagnosed as the main day of infection because the body was pre-exposed to the infection after heavy Sunday meals.”
Miasma was trumped by bacteriology in the 1870s, Bernard said. Bacteriology is the study of bacteria and their relation to medicine. It evolved from late 19th century germ theory and focuses on the network of relationships among individuals rather than environmental factors.
Bernard said that if infections can be passed from person to person, the fight against epidemics can be aided by examining the roots of the disease. “This undeniable connection gives epidemiological activity from the 1880s and onward, a criminalistic basic orientation,” he said, meaning that this connection led to treating people with infections as if they were criminals.
Mary Mallon, the first asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen bacteria ‘typhi’ in the United States, featured in 1909 cartoon. Picryl
He told the story of Mary Mallon, the first person to be identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen bacteria ‘typhi’ in the United States. She infected over 35 people with typhoid fever in Manhattan, New York, and was arrested when she refused to have her gallbladder removed. Still remembered as “Typhoid Mary,” she was imprisoned in a hospital for over 30 years and passed away in 1938.
“Since the end of the 19th century,” Bernard said, “I think bacteriology epidemiology has promoted a paranoid imagination of society.”
The lecture prompted an after-discussion about the history of vaccination. Bernard said that when the now-common prevention method was first introduced in the late 18th century, researchers engaged in significant discourse about the relationship between humans and animals, a conversation that has been passed down over the last 150 years.
Dr. Edward Jenner, from England, in 1796 published a famous book discussing how vaccinating humans with cowpox could lead to a hybrid mutation in humans and animals.
Bernard said similar debates have continued ever since. For example, in the early history of the AIDS epidemic, there were about 34 Haitian refugees infected with the disease and a myth at the time purported that they took part in blood rituals where human and animal blood interacted.
Karli Korszeniewski is a second-year Film and Media Studies major at UC Santa Barbara. She is a Web and Social Media Intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.