Demons of Illness and Poverty Stalking the Lucky Gods, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1884. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Herbert R. Cole Collection.

Epidemic

Volume XIII, Number 3 | summer 2020

Miscellany

The bark of Cinchona trees (from which quinine is obtained) was first described as a remedy for malaria by Jesuit missionaries in Peru. Protestant hostility toward Jesuits, however, led to a distrust of “Peruvian bark” in England. An apothecary’s apprentice named Robert Talbor warned patients to “beware of all palliative cures and especially that known by the name of Jesuits’ powder,” instead offering his own secret remedy. His treatment was highly effective, earning him a fortune. A year after his death, his “En­glish remedy” was revealed to be an infusion of cinchona powder mixed with opium and wine.

Charts & Graphs

Flu Fallout

A majority of the estimated 675,000 American deaths from the influenza pandemic of 1918–19 occurred during the second wave, which swept the country throughout the fall of 1918.

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Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.

—Leslie Jamison, 2020