Plague, smallpox, polio, typhus, typhoid, cholera, syphilis, diphtheria, tuberculosis, malaria, measles, influenza, AIDS, COVID-19, and many more: Infectious diseases and the epidemics and pandemics that they cause terrify, surprise, reveal, instruct and fascinate. They cause grief, mold history, and drive advances in science. Not long ago experts and public officials were heralding the end of the era of deadly communicable diseases. Vaccines, antibiotics, and public health were eliminating smallpox, polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, malaria, syphilis, and other infectious diseases that terrified people throughout history. This optimism collided with the resurgence of old, new, and previously unrecognized infectious diseases. This course will look at the evolving relationships of hosts (us), microorganisms (them), and the environment to try to understand how these diseases emerge, take us by surprise, rampage, disappear, and resurge. Where do they come from? Where do they go? What have we learned? How do people respond? Will microbial genes continue to outwit us? We’ll look at how past generations experienced epidemics with Thucydides, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Pepys, Defoe, Cotton Mather, Camus, and others. We’ll discuss how we experience them now and have come to understand them through scientific insights from Galen, Frascatorius, Virchow, Koch, and Pasteur and from today’s scientists and physicians like Fauci and others. Class Limit: 20
Instructor Jonathan Gold is a retired physician. He has worked in a variety of roles in internal medicine, infectious diseases, medical microbiology, refugee medicine, and geriatrics. He was an infectious diseases clinician and Director of the Special Microbiology Laboratory (clinical virology and serology laboratory) at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Director of Medicine at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital and Medical Director of a Program of All Inclusive Care of the Elderly (PACE), all in New York City. During the AIDS epidemic he was involved patient care and research into the cause and infectious complications of HIV. He lives in Newcastle and likes to dabble in things that interest him: gardening, bird watching, star gazing, French, photography and speculations about the intersection between organisms, hosts, and the environment.