Vol. 49, No. 2 April 2020 Newsof the lHistoryetter of Science Society Table of Contents Coronaviruses and the History of Coronaviruses and the History of Science Science COVID-19: Lessons From History? 1 What the Plague Can Teach Us COVID-19: Lessons from History? About the Coronavirus 3 By Robin A. Weiss Why Food Matters 5 Q&A with Megan Raby, 2019 Pauly “The low transmissibility of the virus, combined with Prize Winner 8 infectiousness after the onset of clinical symptoms, Bill Clark or the Ironic Analyst of made simple public health measures, such as isolating homo academicus 12 patients and quarantining their contacts, very effective in the control in the control of the SARS epidemic. We Innovations in Education: Teaching with the Isis Bibliography 15 were lucky this time round but may not be so with the next epidemic outbreak of a novel aetiological agent.” Member News 17 The above statement appeared in a chapter by Roy In Memoriam: Marilyn Gaull, Aaron S. Moore 20 Anderson and colleagues following the 2003 SARS Diagram of COVID-19, courtesy of the U.S. Centers for outbreak published in SARS: A Case Study in Emerging HSS News 23 Disease Control and Prevention Infections (Oxford University Press 2005) as the News from the Profession 24 augmented proceedings of a meeting on the topic held Editor’s note: We open this issue with two articles at the Royal Society. In the concluding chapter, Angela Donations to the HSS for 2019 27 pertaining to the current pandemic crisis: one by a virologist McLean and I advised that we should “expect the and the other by a historian of science & medicine. Despite unexpected” and alas, seventeen years later, we are not their differing perspectives the two pieces have a surprising so lucky with the outbreak of COVID-19. It is caused number of things in common. Both contain an allusion to by a virus formally named as Severe Acute Respiratory the same medieval work literature, and both highlight the Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) because practical value of our discipline in the wider world, serving its genetic sequence is closely related to the SARS as a timely reminder that we imperil ourselves when we coronavirus, but it’s more commonly referred to in the ignore history. media and by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “COVID virus” or “Coronavirus.” Continued on Page 2 History of Science Society Newsletter Coronaviruses, cont. History of Science Society Executive Office History of Science Society The high rate of virus transmission before Complacency about the spread of COVID-19, 440 Geddes Hall symptoms appear has allowed COVID virus together with the desire of local authorities to University of Notre Dame to spread much faster in the community than downplay the significance of the outbreak, has Notre Dame, IN 46556 Phone: 574-631-1194; Fax: 574-631-1533 SARS, although its virulence in most infected resulted in the international spread of this virus. E-mail: [email protected] individuals appears to be lower. At the time However, once they realized the gravity of the Web site: http://www.hssonline.org/ of writing (March 8), the global mortality situation, the Chinese seem to be managing to Subscription Inquiries University of Chicago Press threat appears to be lower than the 1918/19 flu contain the epidemic at its original epicenter, Phone: 877-705-1878; Fax 877-705-1879 pandemic (the “Spanish” influenza pandemic that Wuhan in Hubei province, in contrast to, say, E-mail: [email protected] claimed ~50 million deaths) but might eventually Italy. Mathematical modeling for predicting the Or write: University of Chicago Press, Subscription Fulfillment Manager, PO Box overtake the 2009 flu pandemic (~280,000 course of novel epidemics has also become much 37005, Chicago, IL 60637-7363 deaths). more sophisticated since the SARS outbreak Moving? and has informed contingency planning. But Please notify both the HSS Executive Office and During the past 40 years, advances in the the University of Chicago Press. politicians are reluctant to allocate large budgets technology of virus identification and for pandemic preparedness against something Editorial Policies, Advertising and Submissions characterization have proceeded apace. The History of Science Society Newsletter is that hasn’t happened yet; funding to the Centers published in January, April, July, and October, Following the appearance of AIDS in 1981 as for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA, and sent to all individual members of the Society. a novel affliction it took two years to identify and support for the WHO declined in real terms, The Newsletter Editor is Neeraja Sankaran. The the causative agent, HIV-1, and a further 18 format and editorial policies are determined by the until this month. Editor in consultation with the Society Editors. All months before its genome was fully cloned and advertising copy must be submitted in electronic sequenced. With the advent of SARS in 2003, Despite the rapidity of developing genome- form. Advertisements are accepted on a space- available basis only, and the Society reserves the it took only 2 months to characterize it as a based diagnostic tests, it takes time to scale up right not to print a submission. The rates are as member of the Coronavirus family whereas and distribute them in countries with advanced follows: Full page (10 x 7”), $625; Horizontal or Vertical Half page (5 x 7”), $375; Quarter page (5 in January 2020, Chinese scientists obtained economies let alone in poor and middle-income x 3.5”), $225. The deadline for insertion orders is the full genetic sequence of the newly isolated nations. An effective vaccine may well be devised six weeks prior to the month of publication and COVID-19 virus within 3 days. Yet therein lies based on the virus’s “S” protein since similar should be sent to [email protected]. Please send photographs in a jpeg format, with a maximum one of the unlearned lessons: because the genetic constructs have proved effective in pre-clinical size of 1024 pixels and file size of 1 MB to maintain sequence turned out to be 70% similar to the tests with the SARS virus, but that will take years quality during sizing and printing. The deadline for news, announcements, and job/fellowship/prize SARS virus, investigators in Wuhan initially rather than months to roll out across the world. listings is firm: four weeks prior to the month of assumed that the transmission dynamics would In a report on Research in Global Health publication. Long items (feature stories) should be submitted eight weeks prior to the month of also be similar, and they lost a crucial window of Emergencies published on January 28, the publication. Please send all material to the attention opportunity to nip the epidemic in the bud. Nuffield Council on Bioethics emphasizes the of the Executive Office:[email protected] . © 2020 by the History of Science Society Continued on Page 3 2 History of Science Society Newsletter • April 2020 History of Science Society Newsletter Coronaviruses, cont. need for clinical trials to proceed ethically even in What the Plague Can Teach emergencies. Us About the Coronavirus Antiviral drugs are being investigated that might by Hannah Marcus help to ameliorate severe disease. I favor testing existing, licensed, inexpensive drugs that might This article originally appeared in The New York be repurposed to fight COVID-19. For instance, Times op-ed pages on March 1, 2020. we already know that this coronavirus docks onto the same cell surface molecule as the SARS The city that gave us the word quarantine nearly virus, namely, angiotensin converting enzyme 600 years ago is once again facing an epidemic. type 2 (ACE-2). Drugs such as Valsartan and On Feb. 23, officials in Venice canceled the final Losartan are ACE-2 receptor antagonists, taken days of its Carnival festival, which brings hordes by millions of people (including myself) to lower of tourists to the notoriously overcrowded lagoon blood pressure. But be careful, for while they city. The coronavirus COVID-19 had arrived. might help protect against COVID-19, they may exacerbate the situation instead. Faced with a novel virus, it’s worth reconsidering Italy’s long experiences with epidemics and What else can we fall back on in the face of this heeding the lessons. Though the etiologies of emergency? Well, traditional historic methods: plague and the present coronavirus differ hugely, quarantine and personal hygiene. Boccaccio and the social consequences of these outbreaks his friends self-isolated outside Florence against resonate in alarmingly similar ways. the Black Death in 1348, as did the altruistic villagers of the Eyam in Derbyshire, England As a historian of medicine, my research focuses Image of a collection of the Bills of Mortality during the plague epidemic of 1665. And, as on Italy in the early modern period, from 1400 for London in the plague outbreak of 1665, Ignac Semmelweis railed against his unheeding to 1700. In this period, many of our current published the same year by E. Cores in London medical colleagues in the 1840s: “Now wash your public health approaches, including tallying and attributed to a John Graunt. For further hands.” fatalities, emerged in response to outbreaks of information see: https://www.christies.com, from where the image was obtained. Robin Weiss is an Emeritus Professor of Viral plague. The word quarantine derives from the From the 1450s in Milan and the 1530s Oncology, Division of Infection & Immunity at Venetian word for 40 days, the length of the University College London. isolation period imposed on ships during times in Venice, all deaths in these cities were of plague. City officials during the Renaissance, systematically recorded to monitor outbreaks.