A History of Pandemics – QUB Podcast (available on Spotify)

‘We live in unprecedented times.’ How often, over the past year, have we heard politicians and commentators make this type of statement. Actually - no – we don’t.  Throughout history pandemics have been a fact of life.

Ex-St. Malachy’s student Dr John Curran is a Senior Lecturer at Queen’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities and one of the contributors to this timely look at pandemics and their consequences through history. As an historian of classical antiquity, he examines the devastating plagues of the ancient world in the first episode called ‘Civilisations under Attack’. 

The technical vocabulary of disease is still largely in Greek and Latin e.g. pan=all, demos=people, virus=poison, etc. Large scale disease held a particular dread for the Greeks. John examines the great plague at Athens in 431-429 B.C. when, during a war with Sparta, the surrounding rural population crowded into the city and a deadly plague broke out. In the absence of any social distancing it killed a quarter of the population including Pericles, the great champion of Athenian democracy (and hero of Boris Johnson). It marked the start of Athens’ decline. 

Rome also suffered plagues on a vast scale which affected commerce and damaged the structures of society. In other episodes the spread of the devastating Black death along shipping routes to Europe is examined. It may have killed over two million people in England alone. Descriptions of the contagion are not easy listening. The final episode discusses how the present Coronavirus might lead to long term changes in health planning, insurance and economic responses. 

History, as John Curran points out, is a ‘two-way street’. We look back at the past, but the past sends us messages for our own time. This Queen’s University podcast shows us that we can indeed learn from the experiences of those who battled the great plagues of ancient and medieval times and is well worth a listen.

                                                                                                                        G. McN