'The Great Unwashed' - Professor Sir Richard Evans

Typhus, the subject of the fifth lecture in the series, was caused by a bacterium hosted by the human body louse, and has thus always been associated with dirty and overcrowded conditions and spread above all by armies marching across the countryside and living in filthy and unhygienic conditions. In 18th-century England it was known as 'gaol fever'. The 'hygienic revolution' of the Victorian era reduced its incidence. Preventive measures taken on the Western Front reduced casualties, but it recurred during the Second World War, especially at Stalingrad and in Nazi concentration camps. The Nazis carried out numerous experiments on involuntary human subjects to try and develop preventive measures; in Nazi propaganda, the spread of typhus was attributed to the Jews, who were likened to bacilli or lice in order to make their mass murder at Auschwitz and elsewhere acceptable.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
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[@fauxmanchu8094]

Typhus - the deadliest of the camp fevers. -- Dr. Hans Zinzer. His book Rats, Lice and History about typhus is one of the best books I've read. This lecture is most excellent.

[@Simon-ho6ly]

The first question... "are we overdue for a pandemic" the answer was no.... well im watching in 2020... seems we were

[@bpath60]

Tour de Force Series , Thank you Dr. Evans and Gresham College !-

[@alexcarter8807]

When I was little I lived in an area of Hawaii, "Hawaii Kai", that was build on "reclaimed" land by Henry J. Kaiser on swamps. It was already a wealthy area then, but I remember the DDT truck spraying along the street, it smelled like rotten eggs.

[@WildBillCox13]

I still have my copy of Plagues and Peoples.

[@lucar.5045]

I wished people would have listened to this lecture during the Covid-19 psycosis. And also had read Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault, great source of teaching on the issue of patogeny-society control

[@charlotte-mg9wj]

i am enjoying his lectures but he really needs to see to that cough...