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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
Jonathan B. Tucker '75 Ever since Robert Stevens died in early October from the inhaled form of anthrax, the nation has had to contend with the chilling reality of bioterrorism. But this dreaded disease is hardly the only weapon in the terrorist arsenal, and in a perhaps prescient book, Jonathan Tucker, an expert in biological warfare, presents the story of humankind’s “greatest scourge”—smallpox. First mentioned in Egyptian writings around 3700 BCE, the virus-caused ailment, which is often fatal, “had a major impact on the history of the ancient world,” says Tucker, noting that when it found its way to the New World, the effect on a native population that had never known the disease was especially deadly. “Smallpox was a democratic scourge, afflicting people of every race, class, and social position.” But in about 1000 BCE in India, someone, after observing that people who survived smallpox acquired permanent immunity to it, attempted to prevent the disease by deliberately inoculating volunteers with material gleaned from the pustules that characterized the ailment. This risky procedure, known as variolation, would eventually be practiced in many parts of the world, and an experiment to improve it led Edward Jenner to develop a safer, more effective vaccine in the late 1700s. Tucker’s account of the history of vaccination and how the vaccine, in the days before refrigeration, was kept viable by transferring it arm-to-arm, is fascinating reading. The story of the concerted effort by the World Health Organization to eradicate smallpox from the planet—the disease was officially declared conquered in 1980—is often cited as one of the greatest achievements of public health. But there is a dark side to the tale. In the 1760s the British used smallpox against American Indians, giving them infected blankets and triggering a deliberate epidemic. Many experts consider the virus to be too dangerous to deploy on the battlefield, but Tucker reveals the extent to which scientists in the then-Soviet Union developed it into the ultimate doomsday weapon. Researchers and diplomats are currently debating the wisdom of destroying the last-known stocks of the virus in U.S. and Russian repositories, even as recent events have prompted officials here to consider a new effort to vaccinate a population whose immunity to the disease has vanished. “The risk of a deliberate reintroduction of smallpox remains quite low,” notes Tucker, “but it is not zero.”
Joanne
B. Freeman, Assistant Professor of History The rough-and-tumble events that dogged Bill Clinton during his terms in office had many observers bemoaning the fact that politics had become a contact sport. But as historian Joanne Freeman points out in this revealing look at the way the game was played in the early days of the United States, politics was never genteel. As an example, she recounts a mob scene in New York City on July 18, 1795 when citizens protesting a treaty between Great Britain and the U.S. so angered Alexander Hamilton, who had already been hit in the head with a rock, that he issued challenges to two rivals to meet for duels. “Hissings, coughings, hootings, strong words, clenched fists, and the threat of gunplay: this story displays America’s founders as real people caught up in the heat of the moment on a summer afternoon,” she says. Freeman has mined archival material to piece together the role of a code of honor that often drove politics and political leaders. “I discovered what I came to call the 'ouch factor': the wake of pain and outrage provoked by the passage of political gossip,” she says. “Follow the path of outrage, and you reconstruct national networks of political friends and enemies.” The war of words, both spoken and issued through broadsides, could escalate into a duel with pistols—a challenge that cost Hamilton his life at the hands of Aaron Burr. The fact that Clinton and Ken Starr did not take up arms shows that the political landscape has changed a bit.
Andrew Solomon ’85 Everyone gets the blues at one time or another, but according to modern researchers, about 19 million Americans suffer from chronic depression. This serious mental illness, says the author, “can be described as emotional pain that forces itself on us against our will, and then breaks free of its externals. a tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth.” Solomon uses his successful battle with “the noonday demon”—the Psalmist’s term for melancholia—as the starting point for a comprehensive exploration of the origin, treatment, history, sociology, politics, and evolution of depression. The book profiles sufferers around the world and examines the many treatments that have been developed, from the admonition of Hippocrates to take mandrake to deal with an excess of black bile to today’s electroconvulsive, drug, and talking therapies. “We do not really know what causes depression,” says Solomon. “We do not really know why certain treatments may be effective for depression.” It has clearly been part of the human condition for a long time and, argues Solomon, it will continue to haunt our species for the foreseeable future. “Depression is the flaw in love,” he says. “To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.” There may be no cure, but fortunately, these days, there’s hope, or, at least, Prozac.
Brief Reviews Peter Gay, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History In making his case that sexually emboldened Viennese playwright Arthur Schnitzler was a better symbol of the 19th century than corseted Queen Victoria, historian Gay asserts that the Victorians were not very Victorian.
Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Avalon Professor of the History of Medicine Watson and Crick proposed the double helix structure of DNA; Meselson and Stahl confirmed it.
Adam Lewis '72MFA Widely regarded as the father of 20th-century American design, Van Day Truex transformed the Parsons School of Design and Tiffany and Company into trendsetters that defined style and grace.
Eric L. Muller '87JD During the Second World War, Japanese Americans were not only stripped of their rights as citizens and forced into internment camps, they were also drafted into the Army. Law professor Muller tells how some resisted.
Richard S. Tedlow '69 A Harvard Business School professor examines the impact of Andrew Carnegie, George Eastman, Henry Ford, Thomas J. Watson Sr., Charles Revson, Sam Walton, and Robert Noyce.
Harry Toland '44 In 1892, English surgeon Wilfred Grenfell began a medical mission in Newfoundland and Labrador. Toland, a Grenfell volunteer in 1931, recounts the story of America’s first major overseas volunteer movement.
Elizabeth Ballantine 1971, 1986PhD, and Stephen S. Lash 1962 Harold Bloom 1956PhD, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Editor Paul F. Boller Jr. 1939 Gerald Cohen 1982 Frederick Crews 1955 Peter D'Epiro 1981PhD and Mary Desmond Pinkowish 1982MPH Roger Ferlo 1979PhD Rena Fraden 1977, 1983PhD Jessica Helfand 1982, 1989MFA Clarence Hotchkiss 1950 R. S. Howe Jr. 1950 John Klein 1975 William L. Krinsky 1967, Associate Clinical Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, and Michael K. Oliver 1984PhD James N. McCutcheon 1950 James Meyer 1984 Char Miller Keith Steiner 1950 Shelby Tucker 1957 Jeff Wheelwright 1969 William Wroth 1960, Editor
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©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
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