David Quammen Quotes
I thought 'The Hot Zone' was fascinating, mesmerizing. It's one of the things that got me interested in Ebola.
Quammen, David. "Ebola In The 'Hot Zone': A Conversation With David Quammen." Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air, NPR, 16 Oct. 2014.
He is in charge of collecting and deploying the funds donated for infectious diseases from countries throughout the world. Each nation has its own budget cycle and the public health officials have to plan and act as soon as they learn that an epidemic is breaking out. The viruses and bacteria grow when they grow, not when budgets have planned for them.
This is an amazing quotation and shows that the Ancient Romans who had a very sophisticated medical technology had a notion of germs and microbes. Ancient Rome was the first organized nation for which health, medicine, public health, and medical research were governmental functions unlike Greece and other civilizations where health was a personal function. Roman policy emphasized prevention unlike the Greeks. Sanitation and water supply and quality were government responsibilities and the Roman standard was not reached in the rest of the world until the 18th century. Heath and medicine was also a major military responsibility. The Roman Empire depended on its army, and trained professional soldiers. Disease was a greater risk to the soldiers than were battlefield casualties, and the Romans had a strong vested interest in keeping these highly trained men alive and healthy—not just the wealthy Roman citizens. The Romans were open to techniques that were developed throughout the Empire and beyond and tended to adopt all good ideas and a few bad ones as well While they had advanced surgery, the public health was the strongest aspect of Roman medicine and health and this notion of germs and disease. Remember that the writer was not a medical or scientific man, but was just indicating what was general wisdom of the Roman elite.
The graphic is a painting of the effect of the plague in Ireland. Clearly his first sentence exaggerates, but there were some areas where most humans died. See {620882} for a Muslim Historian’s description of the plague.
David Quammen is an American science, nature, and travel writer and the author of fifteen books. For 15 years he wrote a column called "Natural Acts" for Outside magazine. His articles have also appeared in National Geographic, Harper's, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and other periodicals. In 2013, Quammen's book Spillover was shortlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
