The grand illusion: Local solutions for global problems

In the summer of 430 BCE, a ship from Egypt arrived in Piraeus with an uninvited guest on board: "the plague." The symptoms of this yet-to-be-identified disease - hypotheses range from typhoid fever to viral hemorrhagic fever - are described by the historian Thucydides, who was infected and survived. They included extreme headache, redness and inflammation of the eyes, bloody throats and tongues, repellent breath, sneezing, hoarseness and cough, pain in the stomach causing vomiting, reddish and livid bodies covered with pimples and welts, high fever, and thirst. The fever killed most patients within seven to nine days, others died later from weakness. Some patients are reported to have lost their sight, or even genitals, fingers and toes. It is estimated that the disease killed more than 50,000 people. The doctors who attempted to treat it were its first casualties; the most prominent...