The Third History of Man

Summary

In the spirit of medieval writer Chaucer, all human activity lies within the artist’s scope, the History of Man Series uses medicine as a jumping off point to explore precisely that, all history, all science, all human activity since the beginning of time. The jumping off style of writing takes the reader, the listener into worlds unknown, always returning to base, only to jump off again. History of Man are stories and tales of nearly everything.

The Third History of Man leaves bacteria in the rear-view mirror and jumps to viruses and viral infections, the cold, the flu and COVID-19, not just another flu. We’ll cover epidemics, pandemics, and vaccines, the pox infections, and the Spock principle that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few … or the one. From COVID and the rise of Zoom, we’ll venture into the rise of Homo sapiensand the fall of Neanderthals, the high sea adventures of Darwin aboard and the high sea adventures of dementia. Our travels will take us along the Silk Road and Spice Trade, another visit with the Age of Discovery when masted ships and European explorers went looking for that elusive sea route to the Far East, and looking for gold, annihilating huge swaths of indigenous Americans at every port of disembarkation, not by the pointy end of a sword, but by tiny infectious microbes. We’ll examine colonialism at its finest, the sordid European history of imperialism and the land grab into Africa and the New World Americas.