Landing

A series in which I recall that suffering in human life is something all humans have in common.

Cadiz Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1800

You don’t know until you know. Is the vague statement I am making to begin this entry. (Apologies to Perd Hapley.)

You don’t know if bad smells are the smell of sickness, and you don’t know that mosquitos are much worse than they seem (which is pretty bad). You don’t know that a cannon blast won’t clear the air. Or if vinegar and garlic are as protective as they are fragrant.

You don’t know who to blame, either, though in this case the blame was placed on Cuba. People went from Spain to Cuba, sure, and it turns out they also went back.

Dr. Jose Maria Mocino was good enough to be honest about how useless doctors were: “I cannot disguise the fact, that in effect we found ourselves in disagreement about the nosological determination of the disease, about its etiology, about its pathological nature, and as a consequence about the therapeutic, preventative and hygienic matters it necessitates.”

That’s the kind of BS advanced study will teach you to write, friends.

Like many doctors of the day, Mocino suspected that yellow fever had something to do with swampiness. Man you’re almost there. Who… lives… in a swamp… and has blood contact with people?

If only we could go back and fill people in.

Though it might create a disturbance in the space-time continuum.

Images above are from a study done by doctors Etienne Pariset and Andre Mazet in Cadiz, not in 1800, but in 1820, and I think you’ll forgive the slight move forward in time in order to enjoy such quality professional portraits.

I’m sure that guy was fine in the end.

Pariset wrote something called Mémoire sur les causes de la peste et sur les moyens de la détruire (On the causes of the plague, and how to destroy it). Which is a title I might use someday.

Now I’m going to digress: Pariset did his dissertation on uterine hemorrhage, and then became head of the “mental illness” department of a hospital (periods make ya crazy, amirite ladies?). In 1810 he served on a committee to improve conditions for people with mental illness. Why did he go from mental illness to yellow fever?

Good question.

Oh, and he and was good friends with famed archeologist Jean Francois Champollion, who helped decode the Rosetta Stone.

One last bit: in 1845 he helped found the French Society for the Protection of Animals, serving as their first president until his death.

Anyway, In five months in 1800, around 8,000 people died of yellow fever in Cadiz.

Today we have a cheap vaccine for yellow fever, offering lifetime immunity without a booster. Good work, scientists. Sadly, on the African continent about 30,000 people a year die of yellow fever. This is due to a scarcity of vaccine, among other factors.

People are working on it. The UN World Health Organization hoped to vaccinate everyone by 2026, but I’m guessing covid may have set them back a bit. Their campaign is called EYE (Eliminate Yellow Fever Epidemics), and that strikes me as quite the misnomer.

A series in which I gently suggest that I’m not the only person to be frustrated, though it certainly feels that way.

Quebec Smallpox Epidemic of 1776

Why isn’t Quebec part of the United States? Yes, it’s due to one of your favorite Terrible Things: smallpox.

Notorious baddie Benedict Arnold was up north in the winter of 1775-6. The rebels were trying to push the British back, and to add more territory to these United States, too, I guess. They had already won Montreal. They had about 2,500 soldiers, and about a third of them came down with smallpox.

Some might say rebels got smallpox from seductresses of the north, wily women who deliberately lay with American troops in order to infect them.

But maybe that’s just what those filthy disloyal American sluts claimed. I’m not sure.

British troops were much less affected by smallpox. Many of them had already had the disease and survived, or had been vaccinated.

American soldiers tried to inoculate themselves. Smallpox inoculation had been used since as early as 500 BCE in some places, but all the kinks weren’t worked out. Their attempts at inoculation often resulted in contracting a full-blown case of smallpox.

Thus General John Thomas ordered them not to try to self-inoculate. And then he died of smallpox.

In July 1776, another historical item of note was that the Americans left Canada, not because they were outgunned or outfoxed, but because smallpox had hit them so much harder. A huge number of American soldiers were killed by smallpox, rather than by British troops.

George Washington happened to have contracted smallpox on his only overseas trip, to Barbados. Going against an agreement of the Continental Congress, he ordered American troops to be inoculated in 1777.

A series in which I reflect on all the bad things that have happened to people, in order to gain perspective on stupid shit that goes wrong.

Middle East Black Death Epidemics

You know Aleppo, Syria, where things were recently terrible?

In October 1348, they had 500 deaths a day from the Black Death. THINGS HAVE ALWAYS

People in the streets of Aleppo were looking very poorly, with skin lesions and blood in their mouths, adn then they died.

Wild and domesticated animals were said to have also died by the hundreds. (Remember when cats or dogs might get covid? Jesus, thank you that wasn’t a thing. I would have chosen my cats.)

This guy Malik Ashraf, a Muslim leader, was attacking Baghdad. They said they had to quit because they were running out of supplies, but actually, the troops were falling ill with Black Death.

Here’s a fun story about Malik Ashraf: when his father died, he and his brother were trying to secure their claim to the throne. They found a slave who looked a lot like their dad, and had this slave “Dave” it until they could obtain power. Malik’s fake dad ultimately responded the way you might expect a slave who is asked to impersonate a king might: he stabbed Malik’s brother.

Black Plague spread through Mecca, leading to awkward conversations about if pilgrims, who were supposed to go to Mecca by Allah’s orders, had brought it.

Did these medieval people think God was punishing them? Even though they weren’t Christians? They sure did. Well it might be punishment for bad behavior, and it might be Allah was just pissed off.

I imagine that Islamic rituals of cleanliness were helpful during all times of illnesses, but in fact, Islamic law of the time required people to stay in areas where there was illness, and to dismiss theories of contagion. Oops.

They tried bloodletting, everyone’s favorite, since once the blood was out, the patient was always much quieter and did not complain. They tried cold water. And surgery.

Rural areas became ghost towns, as peasants who were theoretically required to tend the land left and never returned. In the cities, abandoned homes were looted. Everyone stopped paying taxes.

In Damascus, there were two months in which 1,000 people died every day.

Ultimately, a third of the Syrian population died.

Let me leave you with this encouraging story, which is set in the Ommiad Mosque. It was built in the 700s on the site of a Roman temple to Jupiter AND a Christian church dedicated to John the Baptist, and it’s still there. During the plague, they had mass burials in the mosque. But they also came together to pray. According to Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who was there:

the rulers, notables, judges and all different (social) classes gathered in the (Umayyad) mosque until they became crowded and they stayed the whole night. Among them were people who were praying, remembering (God), and calling out (to Him).” After the Morning Prayer, they all left together on foot and in their hands were Qur’ans (al-maṣāḥif). Ibn Batṭūṭa observes that the rulers were barefoot and all of the inhabitants of the city came out, “men and women, children and the elderly.” Among them were the “Jews with their Torahs and the Christians with their Gospels.” Everyone was crying, imploring and seeking intercession with God’s Books and Prophets. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa notes that after the event, God decreased the number of deaths in the city compared to others such as Cairo.

Sometimes people aren’t shitty.

“It’s important for a writer to know what’s going on in her mind,” Erica Jong told the New York Times reporter. The feature is “Sunday Routine,” and I was reading it in my pre-getting up cell phone reading, which is NPR stories, the NYT, WaPo, and perhaps CNN.

I mean, that’s fine for Jong to say.

It’s so easy to shame me.

I was emerging, a bit, from a new position at work, a new school year started, and then I had a new landlord, and the new landlord unexpectedly cut down and hauled away every piece of greenery surrounding my beautiful home.

I paced in the living room.

My sister came over.

She took me for the traditional Walk of Oh Shit. Though I felt like stabbing myself and bleeding to death on my bed, instead we walked south, one of my usual walks that might not any longer be my usual walk.

My landlord is a cartoon villain.

When I realized the chainsaw noises were coming from our yard, and that my front balcony was about to be a naked mole rat of a stage overlooking a parking lot rather than a cocooned treehouse of safety, I texted him, “Are you getting rid of all the trees? They are one of the main reasons I moved here.” He responded by sending me a letter that said, “Because of your feelings about the work I am doing on the building, you will have to move out.”

I panicked again. I’ve only lived there a year. I’ve painted almost every wall, lovingly replaced plastic light plates with beautiful new bronze beaded ones, painted cabinets and laid pretty fabrics and papers inside of them, papered my dining room with a hundred old maps, hunted down perfect green and white curtains for my bedroom, a deep green rug for my living room, new pulls for the kitchen, painted the stairs, two ceilings, hung paintings, parasols, musical instruments, and a cuckoo clock.

My hope was in, I make my home anywhere. The cats go with me. (I’m a tyrant.)

My fear was that I’ll never feel baseline safe again. Every year, a move, a new job, a political crisis, a pandemic, a sick family member, a dead family member.

Over 40, it’s probably true.

My primary focus has become so narrowed, narrowed to, just don’t let anyone die. Don’t let anyone drown in despair, or lose a job, or their mind.

I kind of forget when I steered my life by, what do I want?

I feel deep, continuing grief at how I no longer trust. I don’t trust a church to keep its members safe. I don’t trust people to seek the truth and reject lies. I don’t trust people to reject Nazism. I don’t trust people to not laugh at the suffering of others.

I used to think this of right wing Christianity: I disagree with them about almost everything, but at least they are people of conviction, who take morality seriously. Which isn’t to say I’m better, or admirable.

It’s to say that I feel a great, burning fear.

Mostly work saves me. A lot of teaching is grounding and it can use my energy up very cleanly.

One day, though, I finally had to fight hard with one group. Well, with three students. They were not late to class, you see, they just weren’t in the room when I shut the door.

Oh, they were angry. I was angry, too. My teacher shell acts deeply calm, divorced from all emotion. The shell is diamond hard. You’re not coming in here until you’ve been silent for 10 seconds, I said. You will not talk to me that way in my classroom.

My boundary had been crossed, and in a sense I had lost it, but in another sense I was fully myself, and myself was like NO.

When class was over, my heart was beating too fast, and I could feel the adrenaline pushing and pushing.

Instead of going to the meeting I was supposed to attend, I stayed in my classroom.

I cleaned desks, wipe by wipe.

I had to choose myself. At work, maybe especially if your work is “women’s work,” like teaching, if you do not choose yourself, work will kill you. Emotionally, for sure, but maybe physically, too.

So much meaning from teaching, but also such great grief at receiving more responsibility and no more time and no more money or help.

I daily search the websites for apartments. I pack slowly. My art room first. It hurt, but it’s the only room I could pack up and close the door and live pretty much the same.

When I move, it hits where my parents’ breakup hit. Going from a home to no home happened when I was 10. I don’t like it.

This time I’ve tried to think more of my aunt, whose death anniversary approaches. She was a military daughter and a military wife. She moved and moved and moved. I don’t recall her speaking of it as particularly traumatic. Though maybe it was.

I can think of myself as nomad. I pack up camp and can make beautiful camp anywhere.

I can.

I don’t want to.

I’m angry that at a moment I was beginning to feel stable, I have to deal with another great change.

I bought two canvases and painted our building. I put all the trees and ivy and flowers and bushes in. No one can take them away from the paintings.

I’ll give one to my neighbor.

And that’s what’s going on, Erica Jong.