Configurations of Plague

Spatial Diagrams in Early Epidemiology

in Social Analysis
Author:
Lukas Engelmann Chancellor's Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK lukas.engelmann@ed.ac.uk

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2019.630405
Keywords:
bubonic plague; configuration; diagrammatic reasoning; epidemiology; history of science; spatial diagram
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Abstract

Diagrams are found at the heart of the modern history of epidemiology. Epidemiologists used spatial diagrams to visualize concepts of epidemics as arrangements of biological, environmental, historical, as well as social factors and to analyze epidemics as configurations. Often, they provided a representation of the networks of relationships implied by epidemics, rather than to offer conclusions about origin and causation. This article will look at two spatial diagrams of plague across a period in which an epidemiological way of reasoning stood in stark contrast to arguments provided about plague in the rising field of bacteriology and experimental medicine. This historical genealogy of epidemiologists working with diagrams challenges perceptions of epidemic diagrams as mere arguments of causality to emphasize diagrammatic notions of uncertainty, crisis, and invisibility.

Contributor Notes

Lukas Engelmann is a Chancellor's Fellow in History and Sociology of Biomedicine at the University of Edinburgh. His work focuses on the history of epidemics and epidemiology in the long twentieth century, and heis currently working on the history of epidemiological modeling. Recent publications include Mapping AIDS: Visual Histories of an Enduring Epidemic (2018) and, co-authored with Christos Lynteris, Sulphuric Utopias: A History of Maritime Sanitation (MIT Press, 2020). E-mail: lukas.engelmann@ed.ac.uk

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Social Analysis

The International Journal of Anthropology

Cover Social Analysis
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
21
Keywords:
bubonic plague; configuration; diagrammatic reasoning; epidemiology; history of science; spatial diagram
Print Publication Date:
01 Dec 2019
Online Publication Date:
01 Dec 2019
Copyright:
© Berghahn Books 2019

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