Biblical Plagues Research Articles

Giant Polyketide Synthases Biosynthesize a Marine Polyether Biotoxin.

Prymnesin toxins were probably the direct cause of the environmental catastrophe in the Oder river in 2022. They belong to the so-called ladder polyethers, which are among the most toxic non-proteinogenic substances and have caused a whole series of food poisoning in humans and numerous other incidents of fish deaths. Despite massive efforts, the enzymatic machinery has remained enigmatic. In a recent study, researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California, San Diego, have uncovered the initial mechanisms by which algae produce these toxins. Crucial to the breakthrough was the methodological advance in sequencing and assembly that allowed the identification and analysis of the largest polyketide synthase (PKS) known to date, named PKZILLA-1 and PKZILLA-2, which enabled, among other things, the confirmation and elucidation of stereocenters. Thus, further investigations into the biosynthesis and other aspects of these highly toxic substances are made possible, which could perhaps make these 'biblical plagues' predictable.

A Contextual Analysis of Documentary Film as a Product and Tool for Academic Exercise

This paper examines the justifications for using documentary film as a product of academic exercise, using the films "Return of the Biblical Plague: Mosquitoes" and "Bitter Lake" as case studies. Through an analysis of the production and reception of these films, the paper explores how documentary can be used to visually tell stories that follow the replicability of academic research procedures, from the selection of subject matter and site to planning and interviewing subjects to data collection and analysis. The paper also addresses the challenges and ethical considerations associated with using documentary film as an academic exercise, including representation, power, and objectivity issues. Ultimately, the paper argues that documentary films have the potential to enhance academic exercise by providing a compelling, engaging medium through which to explore complex issues and promote critical thinking. The paper is structured into four segments of analysis. The initial segment encompasses the foundational aspects of documentary film production, which involves establishing the core argument and exploring its historical contexts. The subsequent segment delves into research as a reproducible methodology, establishing empirical evidence concerning a particular phenomenon. The third part also examines the essence of the documentary film-making process, accompanied by a comparative analysis juxtaposed with research as a scientific procedural endeavor, including the analysis of two documentary films, "The Biblical Plague" and "Bitter Lake". Using the Auteur film theory, the final segment centers on, culminating in a comprehensive conclusion that substantiates the contention that documentary film-making serves as both a creative output and a valuable tool within the realm of academic exploration.

Any Given Son

Any Given Son Eduardo Halfon (bio) Keywords Eduardo Halfon, fatherhood, circumcision, birth, parenting I was there for the seven hours of labor of my son’s birth. I saw him enter the world. I heard his first cry. I felt on my fingers his first breath. Still dressed in blue scrubs, I cut or rather pinched the umbilical cord. And with my son cradled in my arms, still pale and bloated and tightly swaddled in a light-yellow blanket, I looked at him as if I was looking at somebody else’s son. At any given son. The feeling of motherhood is automatic and primitive, I told myself, perhaps to explain or justify my immediate absence of love. But father-hood, as Joyce wrote in Ulysses, is unknown to man. It is a mystical state, he wrote, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. In any case, I didn’t feel that mystical state or apostolic succession until the following day, when the doctor arrived very early in the morning to perform on my son, there, in that same hospital room in Nebraska, his circumcision. It was the first question I thought of as I looked at the ultrasound and learned it would be a boy: to circumcise or not to circumcise? We read a lot. We discussed it constantly among ourselves. We spoke about it with friends, with family, with doctors and nurses. One gynecologist told us, in an almost evangelical tone, that he’d circumcised his first-born, but not his second, and that the second one had suffered for it. Although he didn’t specify exactly how his second son had suffered, I instantly imagined biblical plagues and divine punishments. According to the most recent studies, there is no evidence that a circumcision will help avoid infections (nor, I think, biblical plagues and divine punishments). According to other studies, there is evidence that a circumcision lessens a man’s sexual pleasure, something that the medieval rabbi and philosopher Maimonides had already warned about almost a millennia ago, in his book The Guide for the Perplexed. Herodotus wrote that the ancient Egyptians would circumcise for reasons of hygiene, although there’s also the hypothesis that they considered the circumcised man worthy of the most esoteric secrets, of myths and spells reserved only for the initiated. The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, valued the foreskin. As did the ancient Romans, who [End Page 328] even protected it by law. Ever since the pact between Abraham and God, Jews are Jews because they’re circumcised (the lack of a foreskin, as the Nazis knew, has always been part of our identity), but it surprised me to learn that not all Jews have practiced it. Moses, disobediently, chose not to circumcise his sons; the ritual of circumcision was completely ignored during the forty days in the desert; and Theodore Herzl, the spiritual father of the State of Israel, decided not to circumcise his only son, Hans, born in 1891. Yet as I studied and read over the historical and scientific and religious documents, I kept thinking of the first time I ever saw the uncircumcised penis of another boy, while we were all showering after swim class in school. I remember the cruel laughter and insults of all the other boys, who from that day on called him Batman. The brief procedure in the Nebraska hospital lasted only a few minutes. And I didn’t even see it. I stayed outside the room, standing in the hallway, listening to his cries, contemplating the possibility of running back in and snatching the scalpel from the doctor’s hand and yelling at her to please leave my son alone. Whatever our reasoning for his circumcision—fear, aesthetics, tradition, hygiene, avoiding future infections or biblical plagues—it was us, his mother and I, who made the decision. A definitive, irreversible decision. And standing by myself in the white cold hallway, I finally started to feel the weight of being a father. For the first time I’d decided something as a father. And I understood, in a categorical or perhaps even mystical way, that my son’s penis, from that moment...

A critical assessment of proposed outbreaks of plague and other epidemic diseases in Ancient Egypt

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has reminded us of past epidemics. Pharaonic Egypt has often been associated with epidemics and disasters through the 10 plagues in the Bible. The aim of this study was to examine which epidemics and serious diseases can be effectively proven for Ancient Egypt through mummies and historical source texts. The biblical plagues cannot be proven because there is no agreement on the dating of the Exodus, or the Exodus is a conglomeration of memories of different events. Other diseases such as malaria and schistosomiasis have been proven for Ancient Egypt, while polio and smallpox are still uncertain. There are indications of a bubonic disease from the time of the middle 18th Dynasty, but its exact nature cannot be determined from source texts or mummies, as they are too vague.

“The Wished Aire”: Biblical Plagues and the Early Modern Playhouse

À une époque où les épidémies de peste sont fréquemment attribuées à la providence divine et associées à la mauvaise qualité de l’air, les théâtres élisabéthains sont identifiés par leurs détracteurs comme des lieux de contagion. Les dramaturges contemporains répondent à de telles accusations en les thématisant dans leur théâtre même. Ainsi, dans A Looking-Glass for London and England de Thomas Lodge et Robert Greene (c. 1589), pièce élisabéthaine tardive qui met en scène le récit des plaies bibliques s’abattant sur la cité antique de Ninive, Lodge (lui-même médecin et dramaturge) et son co-auteur Greene explorent la capacité de leur théâtre à évoquer la menace de la peste par l’intermédiaire d’effets sensoriels et d’images frappantes, avant de faire de cette atmosphère délétère « l’air désiré » de la rédemption.

“We Are No Peculiar Breed of Femmes”: Domesticity as Counter-Discourse for Women with Leprosy, 1940–1960

“We Are No Peculiar Breed of Femmes”Domesticity as Counter-Discourse for Women with Leprosy, 1940–1960 Andrea Elizabeth Milne (bio) As I begin this monthly report of our girls in retrospection the many things I have covered in the past year are called to mind. The variety of subjects have been mentioned in the hope that you ladies in the outside world might somehow get a glimpse into the interests and activities of our lives. Are there questions in your mind about us? Is there a subject that you’ve been hoping I’d mention? If so, let me hear about it and I’ll make an earnest effort to enlighten you. Ann Page, “Ann Page’s The Ladies,” Star, September 1942 For the one-year anniversary of the Star news magazine, Ann Page, the columnist behind the “Ann Page’s The Ladies” section of the paper, told her readers that she found herself reflecting on “the variety of subjects” she had covered in a year’s worth of columns. What sorts of subjects—“interests and activities of our lives”—was she referring to?1 Topics of three articles that appeared in the November 1941 issue, by way of random examples, are the Halloween dance; the popularity of the Simplicity Pattern Book; and the threat of a makeup shortage. One would hardly expect such mundane topics to take up an entire page in a newspaper boasting an international readership in the thousands. These three articles become much less mundane, however, when placed in a larger context: all of these articles were written by patients at US Marine Hospital Number 66 in Carville, Louisiana. Better known as “Carville,” US Marine Hospital Number 66 was the only leprosy hospital in the continental United States, and the Star was its patient-run newspaper.2 Page was just one of a number of female patients at Carville (“Carville [End Page 118] femmes,” as she liked to call them) who placed herself in the glare of the American media spotlight. While Page devoted herself to reaching the Star’s many thousands of subscribers, her colleagues penned bestselling books and took their personal stories to the airwaves. These were women on a mission: namely, to educate the public and de-stigmatize leprosy. Yet, if their projects were all designed to raise awareness and challenge conventional wisdom about the “biblical plague,” the content of their narratives was often rather banal: sharing gossip, comparing room décor, and commenting on the latest fashions. Their discussions might appear superficial to the modern reader; they undeniably invited stereotypes and encouraged paternalism. In this article, however, I argue that the seemingly superficial components of these Carville femmes’ narrative work were, in fact, far from trifling. For women living with a disease as stigmatized as Hansen’s disease (HD)3—a condition inextricable from a discourse of monstrosity, grotesqueness, and sexlessness4—asserting even the most stereotypical of femininities was a form of activism. Ann Page, Betty Martin, and Gertrude Hornbostel represented themselves as domestic producers, conspicuous consumers, and providers of care. In the context of a quarantined community, claims to idealized femininity constitute a potent form of resistance, resistance against not only dehumanizing cultural constructions of HD but also the institutional approaches to disease management conditioned by those discourses. In this article I demonstrate the discursive power of a publicly articulated will to womanhood, using three different public presentations of Carville women: (1) Ann Page’s “The Ladies” column in the Star, Carville’s modest but widely circulated patient-run news magazine; (2) two books authored by Betty Martin, each of which received considerable popular and critical acclaim: Miracle at Carville (1950) and No One Must Ever Know (1959); and (3) different media treatments of the widely publicized 1946 story of Hans and Gertrude Hornbostel.5 Page, Martin, and Hornbostel were Carville’s most famous women. Their work also had the largest social impact outside the boundaries of the leprosarium; as such, the visions of femininity they cultivated are especially deserving of analysis. The Carville femmes employed vastly different narrative and rhetorical styles in their public writing, and in so doing achieved vastly different responses from their audiences. Despite taking...

Rift Valley fever: still an emerging infection after 3500 years.

Rift Valley fever: still an emerging infection after 3500 years.

Long legs drive solitarious locusts’ powerful leaps

![Figure][1] Male gregarious locust ( Schistocerca gregaria ) jumping. Photo credit: Malcolm Burrows. Of all the biblical plagues, locusts are probably the most infamous. Stripping vegetation bare and devastating crops, an advancing swarm can decimate thousands of hectares in a single day

A Numerical Modelling Study on the Potential Role of Tsunamis in the Biblical Exodus

The reliability of the narrative of the Biblical Exodus has been subject of heated debate for decades. Recent archaeological studies seem to provide new insight of the exodus path, and although with a still controversial chronology, the effects of the Minoan Santorini eruption have been proposed as a likely explanation of the biblical plagues. Particularly, it has been suggested that flooding by the associated tsunamis could explain the first plague and the sea parting. Recent modelling studies have shown that Santorini’s tsunami effects were negligible in the eastern Nile Delta, but the released tectonic stress could have triggered local tsunamigenic sources in sequence. This paper is aimed to a quantitative assessment of the potential role of tsunamis in the biblical parting of the sea. Several “best case” scenarios are tested through the application of a numerical model for tsunami propagation that has been previously validated. The former paleogeographic conditions of the eastern Nile Delta have been implemented based upon recent geological studies; and several feasible local sources for tsunamis are proposed. Tsunamis triggered by submarine landslides of 10–30 km3 could have severely impacted the northern Sinai and southern Levantine coasts but with weak effects in the eastern Nile Delta coastline. The lack of noticeable flooding in this area under the most favorable conditions for tsunamis, along with the time sequence of water elevations, make difficult to accept them as a plausible and literally explanation of the first plague and of the drowning of the Egyptian army in the surroundings of the former Shi-Hor Lagoon.

Review: Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years

Review: Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years By Vaclav Smil Reviewed by Enzo Ferrara Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, Italy Smil, Vaclav. Global Catastrophes and Trends. The Next Fifty Years. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 2008. 320pp. ISBN 9780262195867. US$29.95, cloth. Recycled paper. Whether they are natural or man-driven, catastrophes challenge humankind’s grandeur. Myths address such dreadful discontinuities as the foundation of novel times; literally, in the ancient Greek, katastrophe is “the sky falling down”, or “a new beginning”. Yet, be it Atlantis, the Deluge, locusts, or Armageddon, the only indisputable lesson of history is that sooner or later, suddenly or gradually, civilizations eventually collapse. If we also are to worry is the question tackled by Vaclav Smil – renowned energy scientist at the University of Manitoba – attempting to identify the major risks of present times and their likely impact to the global future: despite its worldwide high-tech power, a destiny of failure seems inescapable to our culture too. Smil outlines his skepticism beginning on the first pages. General trends, he observes, follow a pattern of slow gains and gradual diffusion, marked by disperse discontinuities. According to Smil, negative remarks like those given by Jared Diamond (Collapse, 2004) or the Ehrlichs (One with Nineveh, 2004) rely on projections for population, economy, and environment treated as static. Rather, presenting perspectives over the next 50 years, Smil emphasizes the role played by the complexity of human systems, inherent uncertainties, and our limited understanding. His thesis is that key discontinuities occur generally as low- probability but recurrent phenomena (earthquakes, eruptions, pandemics, wars), or as persistent, gradually unfolding trends (resource depletion, demographic progression, environmental, economic, and political shifts). In both cases, understanding change can help us reverse negative trends and minimize the risks before they bring economic collapse, conflicts, or wide social turmoil. The list of threats Smil provides for the environment includes catastrophes that never occurred before, such as nuclear war and human-induced climate change. Smil’s analysis is thoughtful. He surveys also the assault on the global water cycle, the massive alteration of the nitrogen cycle, and the increasing trend of resistance to antibiotics of common pathogenic bacteria. Our actions have changed natural equilibria well beyond the carbon cycle, with consequences already creating environmental end social problems (droughts, floods, salinisation, deforestation, fishing decline). Furthermore, Smil observes that our technical foundations laid down in the past century require huge supplies of energy whose sources and infrastructures urge change. But this is unachievable without discarding old power hierarchies in the geopolitical scenario and building anew. Any possible revolution in energy will depend on the dynamics of the world order, thoroughly analyzed by Smil in their present state: decline of major economies (Japan, Europe, Russia, U.S.), transformation of the Muslim world, and the rise of China and India. To quantify the risks, Smil compares the different probabilities. Although catastrophic floods and earthquakes can take place twice per decade, their global effects are limited and the likelihood that world-changing natural disasters occur is vanishing. Rather, as the fight against disease is decelerating, with a growing evidence of contagious diseases, failures in eradication, and antibiotic resistance, we should expect a new pandemic to happen in half a century having the worst impact in the poor world. Those living in the affluent society should be more worried of climate change and environment depletion. But if a sound perspective is sought to lessen the impact of harmful events on a global scale we ought not to ask for whom the bell tolls. Our efforts should converge chiefly on manmade catastrophes that destroy the environment. After 1989, violent conflicts fell in number, the U.S. and Russia reduced nuclear arsenals, and terrorism has rarely been th effective beyond symbolism (with the tragic exception of September 11 ) – Smil explains – yet the deadly potential accruing to war is orders of magnitude higher than for all natural catastrophes. Mass exodus of populations fleeing conflicts adds to this count, accompanied by famine, which is the most terrible catastrophe of our time. In terms of casualties, modern Armageddon overwhelms any replication of Atlantis or the ten biblical plagues that affected Pharaoh. The text draws on the author’s cultural breadth and gains by his distaste for schematic knowledge. Although he lacks attention to the social and geopolitical ramifications of climate change, Smil provides reliable long- term perspectives along with tables, graphs, and statistics to appraise the dominant trends and potential catastrophes facing humanity for the next generation.

Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things

Calamity befalls the city in Paul Auster's little novel In the Country of Last Things (1987), like a biblical plague. Once or twice a character refers to “the troubles” of the past, but otherwise w...

The biblical plague of the Philistines now has a name, tularemia

An epidemic thought to have been the first instance of bubonic plague in the Mediterranean reveals to have been an episode of tularemia. The deadly epidemic took place in the aftermath of the removal of a wooden box from an isolated Hebrew sanctuary. Death, tumors, and rodents thereafter plagued Philistine country. Unlike earlier explanations proposed, tularemia caused by Francisella tularensis exhaustively explains the outbreak. Tularemia fits all the requirements indicated in the biblical text: it is carried by animals, is transmitted to humans, results in the development of ulceroglandular formations, often misdiagnosed for bubonic plague, and is fatal. Moreover, there is the evidence from the box and rodents: mice, which are known carrier for F. tularensis and can communicate it to humans, were credited by the very Philistines to be linked to the outbreak, and are small enough to nest in the box. Mice also explain the otherwise odd statement in the biblical text of a small Philistine idol repeatedly falling on the floor at night in the building where the Philistines had stored the box as mice exiting the box would easily have tipped over the statuette. Tularemia scores yet another point: an episode of the disease is known to have originated in Canaan and spread to Egypt around 1715 BC, indicating recurrence for the disease, and suggesting Canaan was a reservoir for F. tularensis in the 2nd millennium BC.

Medical papyri describe the effects of the Santorini eruption on human health, and date the eruption to August 1603–March 1601 BC

Egyptian medical papyri date the Santorini eruption, and reconcile the hitherto perceived dichotomy between archaeological/historical and scientific data. The medical documentation describes ailments, which can only have arisen from a volcanic source: ash fallout, rain acidified by ash, and a plume. Furthermore, the Egypt described by the medical texts matches the one in the series of so-called biblical plagues. This match in turn provides the length of time, 19 months, between the initial and final phases of the eruption, each phase contributing to the otherwise odd accumulation of sulfates spread over two consecutive biennia (1603-1600 BC) in Greenland's ice core. As a result, the initial phase of the eruption can be dated to August 21, 1603 BC, and the final one to March 1601 BC, in full agreement with the radiocarbon data (1627-1600 BC) based on the outermost ring on the branch of an olive tree killed by the eruption.

Six medical papyri describe the effects of Santorini’s volcanic ash, and provide Egyptian parallels to the so-called biblical plagues

Six medical papyri document how Santorini's volcanic ash from the Bronze Age biphasic eruption, otherwise attested by material retrieved at the bottom of lakes at the edge of the Nile Delta, severely affected the health of the inhabitants of Egypt as well as their society as a whole. Treatments for burns caused by particulate and dissolved acids are documented in the London Medical Papyrus as well as in the Ebers Papyrus, and are compatible with ash fallout and ash in rain, respectively. Furthermore, both instances of ash correlate to the first eight biblical plagues. Moreover, the latter text also presents a series of ailments coherent with serious inhalation of toxic substances in aerosol form. This scenario is confirmed by the Hearst Medical Papyrus, the Carlsberg Papyrus 8, and the Ramesseum Papyrus III, and fits a volcanic plume, which is also coherent with the ninth biblical plague of palpable obscurity as well as Santorini's second phase of its Bronze Age eruption. Finally, a sixth contemporary medical text, the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, a manual to practice on wounded soldiers, supplies an insight into the collapse of the sociopolitical system of the time. The text appears to provide an insight into the sociopolitical climate in the aftermath of the Santorini eruption, possibly describing conditions that would have led to the tenth and final biblical plague of the massacre of firstborn as well as the escape of slaves from local labor camps.

Treatments for burns in the London Medical Papyrus show the first seven biblical plagues of Egypt are coherent with Santorini’s volcanic fallout

Six treatments for burns in the London Medical Papyrus provide data regarding a volcanic fallout over Egypt. They confirm a previously established scenario linking the medical text to one specific eruption, the one at Santorini in the Bronze Age. One treatment describes the contamination of waters with the ash. Four treatments describe the effects of the ash on the skin. The sixth treatment describes the effect of acid rain following the dispersion of ash in the atmosphere, which triggered weather anomalies. The scenario derived from the medical document, is based on ash from Santorini that sedimented at the bottom of Egyptian lakes, and fits the description of Egypt in the papyrus The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage. Finally, the scenario explains the nature of first seven biblical plagues of Egypt in light of the aftermath of volcanic ash littering Egypt.

Ancient Egyptian doctors and the nature of the biblical plagues

Paragraph 55 of the London Medical Papyrus describes burns derived from red waters and which later became infected with larvae in the wounds. The prescribed treatment for the burn is unusual as it calls for no rinsing and requires bandaging with alkaline materials only. Refraining from washing in the Nile (the single most readily available source of water in ancient Egypt), and the use of alkali-neutralizing agents indicates that the red caustic waters came from the river, and were acid in nature. A red, acid Nile is consistent with the first biblical plague of Egypt, which killed fish, and kept people from drinking from the river. In turn, the sulfate-laced waters of the medical document also offer a plausible insight into the subsequent biblical plagues. Amphibians would have stayed away from the deadly river, left to die on the banks, just as described in the second biblical plague. Similarly, the larvae in the wounds mentioned by the medical document re-echo the third and fourth biblical plagues: the kînnîm invertebrates and the subsequent 'arob (varied insects) are consistent with larvae and the subsequent adults thereof. In pre-industrial Ancient Egypt, sulfates from a massive volcanic fall out provide the simplest and most exhaustive origin for such waters. A massive precipitation that would account for the waters in the medical document and the biblical texts is known from sediments at the bottom of lakes along the Nile Delta. The site is downwind from the island of Santorini, and the deposit of volcanic ashes took place during the Middle Bronze Age, i.e. at a time consistent with the eruption at the Greek volcanic island.

Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa

This is an essay about evil. Its setting is Africa. The characters are mostly African, with an American narrator and Americans in supporting roles. The time is the last decade of the twentieth century, post-Cold War. But the questions are timeless and universal: How do evil people operate? What accounts for their power? Why do people follow? I first went out to Africa in 1983 as a wide-eyed freelance newspaper correspondent drawn to the great emancipation drama then unfolding in South Africa. I had fancied myself a budding specialist on race relations when, fresh out of college a few years earlier, I had gone to work for newspapers in Alabama and Georgia. But I was born too late to witness the wrenching traumas of the civil rights era. I had studied history in college, and as a journalist I wanted to watch history in the making. I was also the sort of person who, while shopping for fitted bed sheets in a Kmart in suburban Atlanta, felt myself suffocating, yearning to explore some of the grittier precincts of the globe. The struggle to bring down apartheid was my kind of story: a stirring crusade against manifest evil, the infamous system of racial tyranny helpfully delineated in black and white. As is often the case in Africa, things didn't work out the way I had planned them. Visa problems kept me out of South Africa for a time, and so I wound up taking the slow road down the continent from Cairo: trains, buses, boats, trucks, taxis packed so tightly that my arms and legs fell asleep. There is a joke among expatriates in Sudan that once you have drunk from the White Nile, you're infected for life. In spite of myself, I had to agree. There was something about Africa that got into my blood and stayed there. Partly it was the magnitude of the dramas sweeping the continent. Africa is a part of the world, I discovered, where multiple eras of history are taking place simultaneously: biblical plagues and famines, genocide, slavery, revolution, emancipation, nation building. In Sudan, I learned, a civil war had begun the year I was born and lasted until I was in high school. Half a million southern Sudanese had died. This

Catastrophic Effects of Environmental Damage and their Consequences

considerably. Events such as the Flood, the intrusion of the North Sea into Holland that resulted in the formation of Lake Ijssel, the eruption of Vesuvius, Pinatubu and Mount St Helens, the droughts in Somalia and Eritrea, earthquakes like the recent ones in Italy, Japan, Afghanistan and Iran, epidemics such as leprosy and tuberculosis, were all perceived as catastrophic. The ten biblical plagues from the Pentateuch ‐ the turning of water into blood, the plague of locusts, frogs, mosquitoes and gnats, the cattle plague, the hailstorms, the pox, the darkness, and the death of the first-born ‐ were perceived as divine punishments. Nothing could be done to avert these events. They happened unaided by human beings. Catastrophes are indelible marks of time. Such events could not be prevented. They were thought to be inevitable. At best, one could arrange for warning, flight and after-care. Other than that, those affected were alone with their fears of death and loss. The events were suffered and coped with as a stroke of fate, as kismet. They threatened the foundations of many people’s existence, and sometimes even that of towns and entire regions. These events were perceived as catastrophes (from the Greek: ‘‘overturn’’, ‘‘change’’). Catastrophes are tragic and inevitable misfortunes for those affected. In addition to natural causes, catastrophes today can have technical, military, economic and political causes. This means that the actions of human beings can have catastrophic consequences for individuals or groups affected by them. The downfall of the aristocracy in Germany after World War II, the effects of the global economic crises in the 1930s in the U.S., the expulsion of Greeks from Turkey in the 1920s, and the forced displacement of Germans in Russia in the 1940s are cases in point. But we also know of many events that had disastrous effects on the environment. Remember the circumstances of the fire at the Sandoz company’s chemical factory at Schweizerhalle or the explosion disasters at Union Carbide in Bhopal and at Icmesa in Seveso and, finally, the various tanker oil spill incidents and the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe. Catastrophes are comprehensive, extremely sudden and very demonic. Catastrophes have three dimensions: radicalness, rapidity and rituality. They are extreme forms of social change. Existing ways of organizing society often prove to be inadequately equipped to respond to them.

The biblical plague of “hemorrhoids” An outbreak of bilharziasis

Dr. Dirckx is Medical Director of the C. H. Gosiger Memorial Health Center of the University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio.