Hymowitz Award Nomination

If you are a history teacher, chances are, you have read at least one essay that starts out with,

Throughout history, societies have . . .

Hopefully, you have crossed these words out and drawn some sort of frowny face before commenting on the inherent weakness of such grandiose statements. In a better world, the student writer would take this advice to heart and learn the joys of being specific. In the actual world, he will go on to write an opinion piece for the New York Times.

In today's NYT, Professor Joel Bakan informs us that "there is reason to believe that childhood itself is now in crisis." Oh noes! What with the gadgets and the sugar and whatnot, the apocalypse is surely upon us.

Look, I'm sure that Professor Bakan actually has some interesting things to say about the purported subject of his essay — the conflict between corporate rights and children's rights at the end of a century of enormous changes in the laws that govern both American corporations and American children. Too bad that's not the essay that made it into the NYT.

Instead of an insightful consideration of who benefits from these specific legal developments, we get an awful lot of fuzzy, a-historical pearl clutching. I have no doubt that poor regulations expose children to harmful chemicals. But is it actually true that, "children today are being exposed to increasing quantities of toxic chemicals"? Like, more than when they worked in tanneries? Or when lead paint and plumbing were still big? Is the risk of toxic chemical exposure really increasing relative to the pre-Superfund era?

Prof. Bakan does raise some tepidly interesting points about over-medication, but the whole piece is just terribly framed. I swear, when I read, "Throughout history, societies have struggled with how to deal with children," my eyes rolled of their own accord. It doesn't help that the whole first paragraph is a standard-issue "it feels like something is wrong" when the kids these days get all mesmerized by their beep-beep-boop-de-boop. Bakan offers a brief nod to the idea that his own parents' generation was likely just as concerned about The Rock and Roll as he is about The Internetz, but he glosses over that quickly, assuring readers that, "the issues confronting parents today can’t be dismissed as mere generational prejudices."

Where have I seen this before?

The wise Man doth justly condemn the folly of those, that are always saying and complaining, what is the cause that the former dayes were better than these? . . . Such complaints often proceeding from Ignorance in History, or non-observation of the vices in those of former, and virtues in some of the present Generation . . . All this not withstanding, some Times are more corrupt, dark, and miserable than can be said of all . . . Yea, the dreggs of those times are now at hand.

That's Increase Mather, on the case in 1679, in his "Call from Heaven," a pamphlet on the raising of godly children.



The Hymowitz Award is awarded for misuses of history in jeremiads.

Harvard Admissions Exam

This version of the Harvard Admission Exam (1869) has been going around among the graduate students. It includes sections on Latin and Greek translation and grammar, History and Geography, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry.

Take a shot at the History and Geography section (no Wikipedia!):

Tennessee Tea Party Demands the Teaching of Children's History

No, not really. But they have released a statement regarding their priorities for history education:

No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.

According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the TN Tea Party believes that

Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government. 

So much to parse.

I'll leave the rest to others, but I was most struck by "the majority of citizens." We could quibble about who is and is not a "citizen," but I would say that this standard does not mean what they think it does.

In Which Historians Are Made Obsolete

I saw this on the Daily Dish this morning:

While we may not hold athletes to the high of standards we hold politicians, we clearly hold them to higher standards than musicians . . . For our distant ancestors, athletic skill was much closer to political power. Small forager bands feared that the few most physically powerful members would attempt to dominate the band by force. Foragers had much less reason to fear domination by the few most musical folks in the band. So it made sense for foragers to hold athletes to higher moral standards than musicians.
So I suspect our tendency to hold athletes to higher standards than musicians is a holdover from our forager days . . .

Well, my job just got a lot easier. Why bother with 10,000 years of history when we can just explain the nuanced peculiarities of modern American culture in paleolithic terms? Robin Hanson is probably right — 21st-century Americans' expectations for athletes and musicians most likely have more to do with the politics of "small forager bands" than with the 1960s.

I think the United States has a bicameral legislature because hunter-gatherers recognized a  hierarchy of earth and sky. This belief in two realms of influence — the "upper" and "lower" spheres of power — is reflected in the structure of our legislative branch.

See? Easy.

Does the Historian's Hat Fit the Associate Justice's Head?

Like many Americans, I find the news that the Taliban has executed a seven-year-old boy to be deeply sickening. Reaction from world leaders has been fairly predictable — those who have commented on the case use it as an example of the unfathomable cruelty and depravity of the Taliban:

Afghan president Hamid Karzai:

"hanging or shooting to kill a 7-year-old boy . . . is a crime against humanity"

British Prime Minister David Cameron:

"If this is true, it is an absolutely horrific crime . . . If true, I think it says more about the Taliban than any book, than any article, than any speech could ever say."

When I read this story, I immediately thought back to Justice Thomas' recent dissent in Graham v. Florida, in which he argued that the Eighth Amendment should be understood to prohibit "methods [of punishment] akin to those that had been considered cruel and unusual at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted." In a footnote to that dissent, Justice Thomas argued that the Founding Fathers would not have considered sentencing a juvenile offender to life in prison without parole "cruel and unusual" because the common law "theoretically permitted [even] capital punishment to be imposed on a person as young as age 7,” reasoning that "It thus seems exceedingly unlikely that the imposition of a life-without-parole sentence on a person of Graham’s age would run afoul of those standards."

Did you notice the sleight of hand?

Responsible Quotation

This past semester, I was a tutor for the required methodology course in the history department. My students were all sophomores and juniors hoping to concentrate in history (pending their ability to pass this course, which, happily, they all did).

Over the course of the semester, one of the main topics of discussion in section was the responsible use of sources. They all wrote papers based on a common collection of primary sources, then read and reviewed each others' work, so we had ample opportunity to see how different people used the same sources to support completely different (and often contradictory) arguments. For the most part, these arguments were reasonable and faithful to the sources.

Several students had some difficulty accepting the idea that the same sources could be interpreted in such diverse ways. They wanted to know what happened, not what some historian decided had happened, and it was my job to break the bad news to them that histories are the stories we tell ourselves about the past, not revelations. Two students found this particularly hard to take and found themselves standing on the brink of a sort of nihilistic postmodernism — you can make up anything and call it history!

Of course, I did my best to talk them back from the edge of despair, pointing out that this was the whole point of basing arguments on primary evidence. It's true that you can make sources say pretty much anything, but it is the historian's responsibility to interpret the sources in a way that represents them faithfully and makes a brave attempt to arrive at some sort of good-faith understanding about the past.

One of the tools I used during discussion was this spoof trailer for Shining, a feel-good family movie about "a writer looking for inspiration" and "a kid looking for a dad." I think it helped clarify what I was trying to say about the malleability of sources and the importance of responsible quotation:

Traditional Food?

CNN has an article up today focusing on a blogger's recent challenge to her readers to eat "real food" for a whole month. Participants committed to avoiding all processed foods, including white flour, sugar, refined oils, and low- or non-fat milk, for 28 days.

There are several interesting things about this article, but the one that really caught my eye was the use of the word "traditional" to describe the foods prepared during this challenge. Though the CNN article does not really elaborate on what "traditional" meant, other websites have lengthy descriptions:

What are Traditional Foods? The traditional food movement focuses on real, whole foods: foods that our ancestors ate. The main deviation from the standard American diet can be found in the attitude towards fat and carbohydrates. Generally, traditional foodists eat fewer carbohydrates (particularly in grains and sugars) than most Americans and don't feel it necessary to limit their fat intake. A typical day for someone who eats according to traditional foods may start with eggs, bacon, and some fruit, followed by meats, cheeses, fruits and vegetables for lunch and dinner. If grains are eaten, they're generally soaked to neutralize anti-nutrients called phytates contained in raw grain products. Meats are generally grass fed, and dairy products are eaten raw: that is, not pasteurized. Processed foods, soy, trans fats, white flour products, and factory farmed meat and dairy products are generally avoided.

I'm trying to imagine an era in which anyone's "ancestors" ate cheese, but not grain, and I've got nothing.*

Scalia on Grave Markers

It's not every day that a Supreme Court Justice comments on grave markers. Today, Justice Scalia held forth on the subject and, once again, demonstrated the The History of the United States According to Antonin Scalia is made-up bullshit.

In the course of arguing that a giant cross erected in the Mojave Desert in 1934 cannot be regarded as a specifically Christian symbol, Scalia told the court that, "The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead."

Actually, that's not all he said:

JUSTICE SCALIA: It's erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. It's the -- the cross is the -- is the most common symbol of -- of -- of the resting place of the dead, and it doesn't seem to me -- what would you have them erect? A cross -- some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Moslem half moon and star?

I'm no legal scholar, but I know a thing or two about gravestones. And Scalia is talking out of his ass on this one.

Hark! A Vagrant

If you think you'd like to read more comics about naval impressment, John Adams as prankster, and history in general, you should check out Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant.

Dear Broadsheet,

For most of recorded human history, women have given birth surrounded by neighbors, friends, mothers, sisters, in-laws, etc.

Communal childbirth is not a "trendlet." In fact, it is more in line with historical norms than the 20th-century idea that birth should be "private." The major difference between modern communal childbirth and historical communal childbirth is that modern fathers are usually expected to participate (though other male relatives often aren't).

Anyway, congrats to Sara and Ev — don't let the historical amnesiacs who rule the Mommy Wars get you down.

Mementos at Arlington

I've been reading Salon's series on "Grave Offenses" at Arlington National Cemetery and I have to say, I'm pretty underwhelmed. Despite the author's outraged tone, there seems to be little cause for the sensational titles. Coming in the wake of the Burr Oak disaster, I think it's somewhat irresponsible of Salon to sensationalize this series which, as far as I can tell, has uncovered no malicious intent or actual wrongdoing.

The first installment made a few serious (though unsubstantiated) accusations — some bodies are not buried beneath the correct headstones — that, if true, are truly troubling. Other complaints — the computer database project is taking longer than expected — are par for the course and hardly outrageous. The boss sounds like a jerk, and, should the investigation find that he did mistreat his employees, he should be punished. That said, Salon presents no evidence to back up its most sensational claims about the actual treatment of bodies at Arlington.

Today's follow-up piece examined the treatment of mementos left at veterans' graves. The author, Mark Benjamin, writes in high dudgeon about personal artifacts being "trashed" at Arlington, rather than catalogued and preserved as they are at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial:

The sun was out after several days of rain . . . Left out in the rain to rot were crayon drawings by children who had lost a parent, photographs of soldiers with their babies, painted portraits and thank-you notes from grade-school kids to fallen soldiers they had never known. Colors of artworks ran together. Photos were blurred and wilted. Poems and letters were illegible wads of wet paper. A worker in a brown uniform wandered among the graves, blasting the headstones with a power washer without regard to what was left of the mementos -- or the obviously uncomfortable mourners looking on. Some items got further soaked. The worker blasted others across the grass. Many of them would end up in a black trash bin in the cemetery's service area.

Benjamin goes on to interview family members who are "distraught" to discover that their grave offerings are destroyed after they are collected during regular cemetery maintenance. He is shocked at the paltry collection of artifacts preserved by cemetery staff — medals, uniforms, children's drawings — which pales in comparison to the vast collection of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. "What war stories had been lost forever? What words from a father to a son or wife to a husband were sitting in some landfill? What meaningful personal artifacts had been relegated to the Arlington trash bin?"

Benjamin has two major objections: the artifacts are treated disrespectfully and they are not being preserved for posterity. The first seems quite overblown — he admits that he visited after several days of heavy rain and the "disrespect" he witnesses seems to consist mainly of soggy letters that have blown about. Does he want Arlington to build a dome? And yes, items left at graves are often removed and discarded in order to keep the cemetery uncluttered. I don't think that this comes as a surprise to anyone. The word "trashed" seems harsh, but I haven't read anything that suggests to me that the Arlington staff has treated grave offerings with callous disregard.

The second complaint is more interesting to me. As an historian, I'd love to see every artifact ever created preserved, but that's a very selfish impulse.

I started out on Benjamin's side, but his over-the-top indignation lost me by the end of the article. His major complaint is that Arlington's collection policies are not the same as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial's. Of course they aren't. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial's policy of collecting, cataloguing, and preserving every photograph, flower, and teddy bear left by visitors is extraordinary, not routine. The collection is vast and growing and is already a valuable resource for scholars.

Benjamin laments that no similar collection exists at Arlington, but that strikes me as an unreasonable standard. No cemetery saves all of the grave offerings — how could it? Set aside the logistics of collecting artifacts from Arlington's 600+ acres vs. the VVM's 500 linear feet, set aside the logistics of cataloging and preserving all of those tons of artifacts, set aside the fact that Arlington has never made a commitment to building a collection (in fact, they ask people not to leave items other than flowers). Should Arlington save the offerings? I'm not so sure.

What is the function of a grave offering? Is it meant for the historian's eye? Or does the historian commit an act of violence merely by gazing? Does it do its work in an archive? Or is it the exchange between the bereaved and the beloved that matters?

As historians, we want to know everything, read everything, and speak for others. We want to dig below the surface, expose everything to the light, claim understanding. It is very hard for us to accept the sacredness of silence and the utility of decay. I would like nothing better than to dig up every body in the slave section of the Newport Common Burying Ground and count the beads, examine the bones, analyze the offerings. What stories I could tell! But I have accepted that those offerings are not for me. It's why I don't support the idea that gravestones should be removed from cemeteries in order to preserve the art — decay is part of the life of that object and it can never mean the same thing in a museum as it did on a hill overlooking the harbor.

Why should we save a letter left on a soldier's grave? Why is it disrespectful to let it dissolve in the rain, soak into the soil, or fly away in the wind?

Benjamin's article reminded me of a seminar I attended when I was in high school at a local historical society. A preservationist from the SPNEA was speaking about preservation techniques for textiles and furniture to an audience of amateurs with attics full of family relics. The preservationist's specialty was quilts, and her eyes widened with wonder when one elderly woman brought forward an ancient quilt that had passed from generation to generation in her family. It was a beautiful quilt — intricate, colorful, and very, very old by quilt standards. When the woman started talking about how their family uses the quilt for their annual family picnic, the preservationist's eyes just about fell out of her head. There was a lot of stammering about wrapping it mylar and NEVER EVER taking outside ever again. The woman looked at the preservationist like she was crazy and said something along the lines of, "everyone in my family for eight generations has sat on this quilt, and you'd better believe it's going to see nine and ten."

What is the value of a quilt? Should it be protected from moths and studied by professors? Or should it decay with use by a family that values it for what it means to them, not for what it tells us about the social and cultural history of quilting?

I'm a professional scholar of material culture. I love an old quilt. I love an old letter. If I had a box full of grave offerings from the 18th century, I'd faint with delight. But I'm not troubled by the treatment of artifacts at Arlington as described in the Salon article. The artifacts are not preserved, but they seem not to be mistreated. What's wrong with that?

Speaking of Civil War Names . . .

. . . is Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) named for Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard?*

I ponder this question as I watch the man confess a shocking ignorance of the history of American law while on national television.

In case you haven't been watching Judge Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, I will summarize Senator Sessions' remarks:

White men are neutral. Everyone else is prejudiced. The application of American law was TOTALLY NEUTRAL AND OBJECTIVE before women, people of color, queers, and their allies started messing everything up.

I watch CNN at the gym, but I had to turn it off this morning. I really could not stand to hear Senators Sessions and Grassley accuse Judge Sotomayor of "activism" in the Ricci case when her ruling was based on precedent and law while Justices Scalia and Alito created a new standard in order to satisfy their political imperatives and bent over backwards to ally themselves with a lawsuit-happy fellow Italian-American. I'm certainly no constitutional originalist (no is, no one can be, no one should be). I just could not stand to see those smug idiots display their prejudices so baldly while simultaneously claiming to be "objective."

They live in a fantasy world, where our national aspirations have already been wholly fufilled. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to study American history, but now I know — so I can laugh in the face of anyone who says that the history of American law is a history of objective decisions rendered by impartial marble men.

Senators Sessions and Grassley (and others, I'm sure — I just didn't watch that that far) have criticized Judge Sotomayor for saying that her experiences and her individual perspective will undoubtedly color her rulings. Of course they will. Just as Justice Scalia's color his. Just as Senator Sessions' color his questions. Are they against introspection? Reflection? Acknowledgment of the inescapability of bias?

What a disgusting display of willful, partisan, racist, historically-illiterate ignorance.

*To be clear, he'd be an asshat whatever his parents named him — I just have Confederate names on the brain.

"The Power of Mortals"

Today, Andrew Sullivan posted a link to H.W. Brands' review of Margaret MacMillan's book, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History under the title, "The Reparations Fantasy." The portion he decided to highlight was the climax of Brand's lengthy meditation on the craft of the historian:

MacMillan mentions but doesn’t delve into the demands for reparations to the descendants of African-American slaves . . . Without question the millions of men, women and children forced into servitude were horribly wronged. But righting that wrong, a century and a half after emancipation, transcends the power of mortals.
Reparations would take money from people who never owned slaves and bestow it on people who never were slaves. It would require judgments of collective guilt and collective innocence, which are problematic at best; when the collectives are defined by race and the judgments extended across generations, the whole issue becomes noxious in the extreme. Racists would find cover for reviving old arguments about slavery actually benefiting slaves—after all, if the issue is money, isn’t the average African-American today better-off than the average West African? What about African-American slaveholders—which side of the ledger do their descendants land on? And the American children of Africans who were never enslaved? Would the president of the United States get a check?

I've never really waded into the debate about reparations before, but Brands' assertion that righting historical wrongs "transcends the power of mortals" stuck in my craw. It's something that people say when they don't wish to be made uncomfortable by a line of inquiry.

Brand makes two major errors in his discussion of reparations: first, he assumes that the federal (and state) government's culpability in the oppression of African Americans ended in 1865; second, he assumes that direct payments to descendants is the only possible form of acceptable reparations.

On the first point, I would point to the re-enslavement of convicts, modern prison and police brutality, educational inequality, and the massive government subsidy of white flight that is the highway system. I am no expert on 20th century history and I'm sure that others could add a lot to that list, but the basic point is this: the government of the United States and of the states individually continue to protect the status quo of racial inequality through positive actions.

This leads to the second point: direct payments to descendants is only one idea for reparations. I agree that direct payments would be a tremendous bureaucratic challenge — just finding the documents to prove descent from particular individuals would be a challenge if the government were to require birth certificates or other official records. But that doesn't mean it's the only solution.

Since the government continues to perpetuate the legacy of slavery through positive acts, it could counteract those acts in various ways. Instead of spending a trillion dollars on cash payments, the government could invest that money in schools, hospitals, and transportation that would benefit cities and rural areas with underserved African American populations. It could devise a drastic program to facilitate home/land/business ownership that would benefit black families on the same scale that the G.I. Bill benefited white families after WWII. It could do something serious about schools.

Like I said, I am new to this debate and I'm sure that these suggestions fall short in many ways. They certainly would not satisfy some of those who have thought more deeply and more sensitively about the possibilities than I have.

My point is that white Americans can't throw up our hands and say, "oh, we couldn't possibly right the wrongs of the past, so let's just talk about something else." That is lazy and it lets us off the hook way too easily. Modern Americans can't erase the evil of slavery, but there's a lot that can be done about social inequality if we insist on committing our considerable creative and financial power to the task.

It's not that we can't make reparations — we choose not to.

The Sky is Falling!

 Oh, wait. It's not.

Comedy = Tragedy +Time?

I'm sitting here, watching the NCAA tournament, when I see a commercial for "kgb" — apparently it is a service where you text in a question and they send an answer.

I looked it up and their full name is "Knowledge Generation Bureau."

Why would you want your information-gathering agency to be known as "kgb"? Is it an intentional reference to the KGB and, if so, is it intended to be funny/cute? If it is intentional, it strikes me as more disturbing than anything else. It's not like naming your company out of something that used to be scary but is now potentially funny/benign, like, say, Vikings. The KGB was a) pretty scary and b) active recently.

What do you think? Too soon?

Spirit of Generosity

"The purpose of a book review is to show that you are smarter than the person who wrote the book."

- an unnamed professor of my acquaintance

This week, I have been unable to avoid the subject of book reviews: my writing workshop is spending the week on Criticism and another of my professors spent part of our fortnightly meeting informing us of his philosophy regarding reviews (noted above).

I enjoy a good mauling as much as the next person, but I was somewhat horrified to hear my professor tell us that he not only saw it as his duty to rip apart books sent to him for review, but that he saves up one-liners to deploy against hapless victims whose books are not even written yet. What good does that do? I suppose his reviews are fun to read (certainly moreso than his other prose), but why not deliver criticism in a spirit of generosity? No book is perfect and most are far from it, but I quake at the prospect of sending a well-researched, painstakingly-written manuscript out into the world knowing that there are reviewers who will delight in its faults.

On the other hand, I don't like timidity in reviewers. My peers in my writing workshop are a bit too wishy-washy so far (except A, bless her opinionated little heart). When I spend ten hours writing and revising a thousand-word essay, I want them to spend at least 20 minutes marking it up and commenting. Last week, I handed back manuscripts covered in comments, suggestions, and edits, but received mostly blank copies of my own work. If they don't put a little more effort in this week, I won't bother taking so many pains in writing for them.

Perhaps I'm just hard to please. I want tough criticism of my work, but not for toughness' own sake. I try to give what hope to receive — thorough, fair comments based on the quality of the ideas and the writing, expressed respectfully, and offered in the spirit of colleagial cooperation. Too naive?

Yetisburg

Pete and I play a lot of board/card games in the evenings when I'm not up to my eyeballs in work. When I'm done with my current crop of essays (soon, I hope!), I'm looking forward to purchasing this one:

The sequel features zombies and is called "Dismembering the Alamo."

Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics

In addition to the fine books I mentioned yesterday, those interested in the history of disease might consider checking out Harvard's online collection, Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics.

The collection, which features over 500,000 pages of manuscripts, is freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The collection is broken up into categories, some of which focus on individual diseases (Syphilis, 1494-1923) while others gather sources on specific epidemics (The Boston Smallpox Epidemic of 1721) and still others are dedicated to broad themes (Concepts of Contagion). Each category contains links to scanned copies of manuscripts from Harvard's collections.

I particularly recommend the section called Pestilence and the Printed Books of the Late 15th Century. The Herbarius (1485) has such beautiful hand-colored pages. I wish I could read the marginalia.

Readings in the History of Disease

After last night's post, I thought I should recommend a few good reads on the topic of epidemics and disease in early America. I also want to try out my new Amazon Associate membership. I'm not really looking to make any money (very unlikely), but I like the look of links I've seen on other blogs.

This isn't the first time I've recommended Elizabeth Fenn's Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (2001). The best thing about this book is its broad geographical sweep. Too often, "early America" means "New England" (I'm guilty of contributing to this), but Fenn traces the epidemic from Canada to Mexico, Atlantic to Pacific, and everywhere in between. Her writing is clear and concise, making Pox Americana a great book for undergraduates and the general public.

One of my absolute favorite books about the history of disease is Jennifer Lee Carrell's The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox (2004). While some of the Amazon reviewers did not enjoy its structure, I loved the way Carrell braided together the stories of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston as both fought for inoculation. Reading her description of victims in the throes of confluent smallpox makes you marvel at what the human body can endure and (sometimes) survive.

Another good one is The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (2006) by Steven Johnson. It deals with a cholera epidemic, the miasma theory of disease, and sanitation in mid-19th-century London. It's good stuff and it sometimes reads like a thriller. I haven't had a chance to read Johnson's new book — The Invention of Air — but I'm looking forward to it.

Other books I haven't read, but am hoping to:

• The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby
• The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry
  

Remembering Epidemics

Pete and I just finished listening to an episode of This American Life that featured a story about a measles epidemic in San Diego that was caused by some parents' decision not to vaccinate their kids. My goal here is not to wade into the vaccination wars directly (others have reviewed the episode in question). Rather, a thought came to me while listening to anti-vaccination parents blithely pooh-poohing measles: I wonder whether Americans' notoriously short historical memory is contributing to this trend.

Most people are vaguely aware that infectious diseases are routinely fatal in eras and areas that do not have access to modern medicine. Yet, we are rarely asked to contemplate what that meant for people living in the past and continues to mean for people around the world today. A visit to any early New England graveyard will provide some testimony to the perils of infectious disease in a community without access to vaccination, most often in the heartbreaking double, triple, and high order multiple gravestones dedicated to children who died during epidemics. Here are a few examples:

Charlestown, MA, December, 1741:
This stone commemorates five daughters of Francis and Frances Lee, four of whom died in the same month. Eleven-year-old Mary survived, but died in 1748.
Margaret, age 10, d. December 1741
Frances, age 7, age 10, d. December 1741
Elizabeth, age 5, age 10, d. December 1741
Sarah, age 3, age 10, d. December 1741

Lexington, MA, August, 1778:
Six children of Abiah and Sarah Childs (more info here):
Moses, age 3, d. 19 August 1778
Eunice, age 12, d. 23 August 1778
Benjamin, age 4, d. 24 August 1778
Sarah, age 13, d. 28 August 1778
Abigail, age 7, d. 29 August 1778
Abijah, age 11, d. 6 September 1778

Chelmsford, MA, October, 1778:
This may have been the same epidemic that claimed the Childs children in Lexington a month before.
Hannah Fletcher and her four children:
Hannah Fletcher, age 30, d. 26 September 1778
Rebeckah, age -, d. 24 September 1778
Jepthae, age 4, d. 26 September 1778
Mary, age 9, d. 3 October 1778
Sarah, age 6, d. 5 October 1778

The Lynd Family of Malden, MA:
The Lynd (or Lynds) family of Malden lost three children in an epidemic in 1753. Twenty-five years later, another epidemic claimed three more. Though the parents of both sets are named Joseph and Mary, the chronology makes it unlikely that all of these children are siblings. I think that an older Joseph and Mary are the parents of the first three and the Mary who died in 1778, while the second Joseph (father of the Mary and Joseph who died in 1778) is probably their son.
Mary, age 12, d. 12 July 1753
Elizabeth, age 3, d. 12 July 1753
Phebe, age 5, d. 13 July 1753

Mary, age 4, d. 17 July 1778
Joseph, age 14 months, d. 23 July 1778

Mary, age 23, 14 August 1778

Menotomy, MA, August-September, 1802:
In Menotomy, now Arlington, MA, epidemics killed large numbers of children every few years, usually in September. Gravestones indicate that particularly destructive diseases hit the community in 1795, 1802, and 1805. Some families lost several children in each successive epidemic.

Three daughters of Amos and Helen Whitmore:
Mary, age 11 months, 24 August 1802
Harriot, age 10, d. 9 September 1802
Nancy, age 8, d. 25 September 1802

Two children of Jacob and Rhoda Nason:
Lydia, age 20 months, d. 5 September 1802
Jacob, age 5, d. 8 September 1802

Three children of Ephraim and Deborah Cutter:
Samuel, age 2, d. 1 September 1802
Debby, age 11, d. 7 September 1802
Benjamin, age 1, d. 8 September 1802

A daughter of Joseph and Mehittable Locke:
Louisa, age 22 months, d. 6 September 1802