I need a new disease. Not for me, not exactly, but for my son. Instead of stories about two mystery solvers named Sam and Lydia, he wants me to regale him with chronicles of ailments, with tales of viruses and bacteria.
This started yesterday, because we were going to the doctor to get Hepatitis A shots. (We bought an enormous bag of frozen fruit this summer that was recalled as possibly contaminated.) And I have already run out of diseases. I’ve gone through all the ones he’s been vaccinated for, all the ones I’ve gotten, too. We’ve touched briefly on cancer, HPV, Lyme disease, leprosy, bubonic plague.
I do remember doing a report on the bubonic plague in second grade. My teacher noted how many drawings of pustules there were, and how very colorful.
I loved the plague. I couldn’t stop reading about it. People talk about kids’ eyes getting big, but that’s exactly how mine felt—they needed to open like bowls so that I could fill them with stories of rats and fleas, of buboes and gangrene.
Why is the idea of disease so appealing, when the reality is so grim? I don’t know the answer, but here’s my guess: distant-seeming illnesses have the shivery appeal of ghost stories. Their progress is a story in itself: A person is just going along, when suddenly… and then… and then… and then, the end. Sometimes, there are symptoms that are fascinating. Other times, there’s a mystery. And viruses and bacteria can be as compelling as classic villains, admirable in their ruthlessness.
Soon, we’ll be on to other things: dinosaurs, poison snakes, skateboards, stars. And already there are signs of compromise: this morning, he agreed to a story about Sam and Lydia with a mystery about a disease. (I cribbed one from an old New York Times Magazine Diagnosis section about a boy who had an allergic reaction to—well, I don’t want to spoil it for you.)
I imagine I have all the questions that my second grade teacher must have had. How much should I indulge this fascination, and how do I also say that these are things that did hurt real people, people just like you and me? How many times to say, “This is something people had a long time ago, we know how to treat it now, it’s so unlikely that this disease will ever hurt you”?
How not to say but something else will. How not to remember this every moment.
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Image courtesy of Flickr user Kathleen Franklin
What a wonderful post this is, Cameron. Is your son old enough for de Kruif’s The Microbe Hunters? or Roueche’s Medical Detectives? I hate biomedicine and even I love those books.
Oh, thank you! I will find those and add them to the mix.
I notice you’re focused on infectious diseases. Why not branch out? How about diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatic heart disease, and many others?
That said, the story of John Snow and cholera is fascinating and documented in at least one good book. Also how about the flu epidemic of 1918-19?
You’re right! I was missing all sorts of things. It’s amazing how blank I go when someone says, “Tell me everything about all the diseases you know.” (That is a direct quote.) Thanks!
How cool. You might try a biography of Louis Pasteur for young readers. I know I read one when I was very young. There is the great detective story of story of how Pasture figured out that worms were bring the spores of Anthrax to the surface of the fields, from the dead sheep buried there, to be eaten by healthy sheep who then sickened and died of Anthrax. Building on the Germ Theory of Disease, and Robert Koch’s discovery of the anthrax germ, Pasteur went on to develope and prove a vaccination against Anthrax in sheep. He also did the same for the diseases of rabies. You might also try a young reader’s biography of Robert Koch, the Father of Microbiology. Best of luck to the both of you!