This work aims to reflect on: 1) the importance of studying rabies at a local level for a better understanding of its regional, national, and European context; 2) evaluating how the implementation of measures differs in a local context, while also discussing how effective measures against rabies have led to changes in human interaction with other animals; 3) contributing to the historical framework of the One Health movement, an approach that integrates human, animal, and environmental health, recognizing their interconnection in issues such as infectious diseases and climate change. To this end, the study will analyze the case of the rabies epidemic in the city of Porto, Portugal, in the 19th century, and its contextualization within the fight against this disease in Portugal, as well as the country's relationship with other nations in this scenario. This research is part of an ongoing investigation. The theoretical-methodological framework anchors in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, with an approach that seeks to demonstrate that the History of Medicine can be rewritten and analyzed as an interspecies relationship. The sources for this study range from medical dissertations and legislative decrees of the Portuguese Kingdom to the media of the time (newspapers and magazines). By exploring the history of rabies and its local and global interconnections, this study not only enriches the historical narrative of human-animal interaction but also sheds light on pressing issues for the contemporary agenda, such as addressing zoonoses and the global health challenges posed by climate change and sustainability.

Studies on the history of viceregal medicine in Peru are relatively recent. However, research has typically focused on the capital, Lima, overlooking other regions that contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of medicine during the viceregal period. Regional history, which is gradually gaining traction in historical studies in Peru, has yet to turn its attention to issues related to public health, even though medical knowledge, practices, and spaces are essential for understanding the social and cultural history of a region.

This study seeks to reconstruct the state of medicine in Piura during the final phase of the Viceroyalty of Peru. To do so, we draw on descriptions provided by travelers and officials who passed through this area in the late 18th century. In addition to highlighting the region's productive and commercial significance, they offer valuable insights into the climate and its various health benefits for Piura’s inhabitants.

On March 2, 1920, the district officer in Anufo raised an alarm to the Resident of Onitsha Province about smallpox, following the deaths of two prisoners from the disease. This marked the beginning of a series of events as the Medical and Sanitary Department, prompted by multiple alerts from various communities within the province, sprang into action. Several scholars have explored colonial response to diseases in African environments and the multifaceted resistance from African communities. Hence, focusing on the periodic smallpox epidemic (c. 1920–1950s) that ravaged colonial southeastern Nigeria, this article proposes new ways of coming to terms with disease outbreaks, medical (mis)trusts, vaccine injustices, discrimination, and the politics of control. By drawing extensively from archival documents (including newspapers), anthropological essays and medical records from the Ministry of Health, the article shall demonstrate how diseases and medicine have a long history of posing as conduits for power asymmetry (between colonised and colonisers or developed and developing economies) when viewed through racial and cultural lenses. In addition, the article intends to draw a comparative analysis between the periodic smallpox epidemic in colonial southeastern Nigeria and some of the more recent large-scale infectious disease outbreaks (i.e., Ebola, COVID-19, and others) that were impactful on Nigerian society. By doing so, it will outline critical historical lessons that can be useful not only to black communities in contemporary southeastern Nigeria but across the defunct colonial world.

Keywords: Colonial Rule, diseases, eastern provinces, epidemic, Nigeria, smallpox, and ethnomedicine

Recent calls for a more complete history of Arctic peoples and places to support climate change research has led to renewed interest in the parallels between historical and contemporary health threats. While modern trade and exchange routes move more quickly than their historical counterparts, the ability to spread communicable diseases between previously isolated communities and disparate geographic regions was just as common in the past as it is in the present. These smaller scale epidemics still pose large threats to daily life and cultural memory in smaller communities. While death tolls may not have been as high, they still pose a risk to a community’s ability to maintain traditional practices, effectively manage themselves, and achieve subsistence goals. As such, understanding the widespread nature of previously unrecorded regional epidemics is a vital part of increasing our readiness for future pandemic threats and highlighting the potential disruptiveness in smaller communities.

In this presentation we show the benefits of combining historical demography and traditional archival sources to examine how large-scale events spread across vast areas of rural or sparsely populated environments. Using these sources and historical ethnographic accounts, we show how traditional Alaska Native trade routes might have spurred the spread of a previously unrecognized regional smallpox epidemic in 1928-1929 that began on the Alaskan Seward Peninsula. While these primary sources are recorded from a settler-colonial perspective, their contents point to the survivance and resilience of Alaska Native subsistence and exchange practices that are still in use today.

Dr Taylor Paskoff