Volume 48, Number 13 · August 9, 2001
The Plagues Are Flying
By Richard Horton
Mosquito: A Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe
by Andrew Spielman and Michael D'Antonio
Hyperion, 247 pp., $22.95
No other disease—indeed, no other force of nature—did more to shape the evolution of American life than yellow fever. HIV-AIDS may, in a century or so, come to be regarded as an equal influence. But it was yellow fever that set the modern rules of engagement—emotional, political, scientific, and medical—in confrontations between disease and humankind. As is often the way with pathologies suppressed and illnesses prevented, the threat that yellow fever posed to society is now largely and happily forgotten. The apparent victory over a temporarily prevalent mosquito is part of the gilt-edged human history of the New World. Such are the repressions of memory, the distractions of the present.
Review, 4630 words
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