Sickness
Chapters on Sickness
Memory in Athens
A History of Epidemics
Scientific Modeling
Colonization
Engraving by Hendrik Hondius portraying three women affected by the dancing plague. Based on original drawing by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who supposedly witnessed a subsequent outbreak in 1564 in Flanders.
Introduction
Sickness can be defined from many different perspectives. These may include social/cultural perspectives, such as the insights of local healers and cultural experts or religious communities. Or sickness may be approached through scientific analysis and diagnosis, the microscope form of a virus or a prescription from a medical doctor. On an individual level, sickness is experienced in and through the body, and through the mind, as a part of the body.
In the current Covid-19 pandemic that is sweeping the globe, doctors, through their practice of medicine are making recommendations to address this illness and search for treatments and a vaccine; politicians and local leaders are prescribing social behavior to contain its spread; and individuals and communities are acting variously, according to the information and directives on offer, or in defiance of them.
In this section, we investigate in the assorted chapters, what it means to be sick and what the behavior around that looks like.
