Disease In History: Frames And Framers

Disease and illness are extremely complicated entities that altered the human race throughout history. Not only is there the biological aspect of disease, but disease also has a social and cultural aspect. All aspects of illness, in their own right, have many intricate layers, but they also coexist in harmony to work together to alter the course of history. The biological side investigates how symptoms affect the body, the course of treatment, and how transmission between parties occurs. The cultural aspect looks into all of the ways disease has altered a society. Throughout history, it was common for the infected to be ostracized and seen as dirty. Religion played a role in explaining illness, by blaming demonic beliefs or different religions

With Rosenberg's framework, we can understand the culture of ancient Rome. Rosenberg’s “Disease in History: Frames and Framers” expresses an ideology that disease can be framed to fit narratives, as well as frame society into something different. This theory allows historians to view ancient Rome through a different lens. Seeing disease as a frame resembles how a particular disease changes a social construct that was seen before the plague that is no longer seen in that society. Essentially, it is how disease and plague alter how we live our daily lives. Framing disease is the concept of how we, as people, look at an illness in a way that fits in a specific ideology. Doctors and researchers who discover these illnesses are framing the disease by describing it and treating it. He states, “In some ways disease does not exist until we have agreed that it does by perceiving, naming, and responding to

In ancient Rome, there was a severe fever that caused harsh symptoms and death. Thanks to the Hippocratic teachings of the Greeks, early Romans were familiar with fever, and thus were able to identify three different fevers that were fatal. Two of the fevers were tertian fevers, meaning they were present every third day, and one was a quartan fever, every fourth day. The “feverish territories” were the swamplands around 500 meters above sea level. These lands were more common in the southern, more coastal areas of ancient Rome. With this observation, physicians recommended moving away from those areas. The depopulation of the coastal south was because of this illness we now know as malaria. Malaria increased mortality rates and depopulations of important regions of the country. With this increase in mortality rate, the age structure of the society also changed to a younger demographic in places of