Warnings & Lessons from Clio
Clio, Muse of History
This semester I have been teaching the propitiously timed course HIST 200: A Global History of Pandemics. Today, I hope to pass on a few insights from our course discussions—discussions which began in a classroom on January 27th where, viewing the John Hopkins map, we first confronted the cluster of deaths around Wuhan, China—little knowing the end of the semester would have us hiding from that same virus and discussing quarantine while practicing social distancing. This experience gave our class a rare insight into its subject matter.
So now, while it is always dangerous to mix history and current events, under the guidance of Clio, the muse of history, I’ll present a few warnings and lessons from our class.[1]
First, Clio would warn us not to panic. After all, while pandemics are terrible, they are natural phenomena. And as such, they have occurred with some regularity throughout recorded history. While past actors may have seen portents of end-times in plagues and pestilence from Pharaonic Egypt and the Black Death to Spanish Influenza and HIV/AIDS, the human race has adapted and survived. As my students learned, life goes on in one way or another and we are not alone in our struggles.
The second warning contrasts with the first. While we gain some perspective from studying past pandemics, Clio cautioned against “fighting the last war.” Signs plastered around 1918 Philadelphia warned, “Spit Spreads Death,” hoping that this intervention—so effectively employed against tuberculosis—might help against that new scourge. It did not. Lesson two: just as we criticize generals who prepare for the last war, they recognize that societies often prepare for the last pandemic.
Clio’s most persistent warning to our class unfolded as students came to appreciate the influence of social conditions on survival. We read of the Athenian Thucydides who bemoaned the abandonment of individuals who, after the loss of loved ones, were left alone to die in their houses. We discussed the slaughter of the Jewish community of Strasbourg on St. Valentine’s Day 1349 and the intensity by which hatred and ignorance led to the scapegoating of already marginalized groups. Seen against the backdrop of current events, these seemed no longer the abstract evils of a faraway place and time, but uncomfortably close in motivation, if not execution, to our current culture.
In summation, while teaching in this pandemic I have seen students find hope, humility, and the opportunity to empathize with past individuals. If nothing else demonstrates the relevancy of the history of pandemics to the public—these should.
[1] Image: Charles Meynier, Clio, Muse of History, Oil on canvas, 1800, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH