April 25, 2026
Essay
Ancient DNA and Disease Selection in West Eurasia
How ancient DNA, infectious disease pressure, immunity, and changing environments help explain genomic selection in West Eurasian populations.
Topic hub
Historical Epidemiology
Essays on epidemics as historical forces: ancient pathogens, colonial encounters, disease ecology, and the long memory of public health.
Essays
16 linked piece(s)
This hub groups related writing so readers can move from one argument to the surrounding disease history, ecology, and evidence.
April 11, 2026
Essay
Big Epidemiology: Disease at Civilization Scale
A framework essay for thinking about disease across deep time, infrastructure, migration, ecology, empire, and the systems civilizations build.
April 4, 2026
Essay
1793 Philadelphia Yellow Fever: America’s First Epidemic Crisis
The 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic as an early American public-health crisis shaped by urban ecology, politics, race, and mosquito-borne disease.
April 1, 2026
Essay
Did Vikings Spread Plague Across the North Sea?
A careful look at Viking movement, North Sea disease ecology, plague evidence, Norse voyages, and the limits of reconstructing medieval pathogen spread.
January 18, 2026
Essay
Plague, Steppe Migrations, and Ancient DNA
Ancient DNA, Yamnaya and steppe migrations, plague evidence, and how pathogen history intersects with population-genetic change.
December 30, 2025
Essay
Cocoliztli: Mexico’s 16th-Century Mystery Epidemic
Cocoliztli and Mexico’s sixteenth-century mystery epidemics, including retrospective diagnosis, colonial records, ancient DNA, and pathogen uncertainty.
December 24, 2025
Essay
Oldest Human Diseases and Prehistory
What ancient infections, inherited pathogens, and human prehistory can reveal about disease pressure before written medical history.
December 3, 2025
Essay
Syphilis Origins Debate: When Did It Reach Europe?
A historical epidemiology guide to the syphilis origins debate, Treponema evidence, ancient DNA, and the Columbian versus pre-Columbian question.
November 19, 2025
Essay
Ancient Hookworm in the Americas
Ancient hookworm in the Americas, parasite geography, archaeology, migration, and why a tropical helminth complicates disease-history origin stories.
November 12, 2025
Essay
Fossilized Poop: What Coprolites Reveal
What fossilized feces, archaeology, parasite evidence, diet, and microbial remains can tell us about ancient health and disease.
November 4, 2025
Essay
Oldest Diseases in the Fossil Record
A deep-time disease essay on the oldest known evidence for infection, cancer, parasites, and what paleopathology can reveal.
October 28, 2025
Essay
Deadliest Microbes in Human History
A critical look at claims about history’s deadliest microbes, mortality estimates, infectious disease rankings, and what counts as a deadly companion.
October 22, 2025
Essay
Leprosy and Empire in the South Pacific
Leprosy, colonial rule, island isolation, stigma, and the public-health geography of empire in the South Pacific.
October 14, 2025
Essay
Staten Island Quarantine War of 1858
The 1858 Staten Island quarantine hospital fire, immigrant disease fear, port quarantine, yellow fever panic, and public-health violence.
September 11, 2025
Essay
Body Snatching and the Doctors’ Riot
How cadaver shortages, grave robbing, riots, and medical education shaped the history of American anatomy and public trust.
July 5, 2025
Essay
Pont-Saint-Esprit Poisoning Outbreak of 1951
The unsolved 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit outbreak, ergot theories, poisoning claims, CIA rumors, and why retrospective diagnosis stays hard.