Since time immemorial, humans have been staid in their desire to understand the world and impress their vision of what it should be upon it. Our project as a species is embodied by a need to illuminate that which we don’t know and approximate what we can’t prove with informed conjecture. This latter aspect of human inquiry changes with the state of knowledge in the world throughout history, with religious, political, and social factors influencing the way people rationalize their physical and social environment. With respect to viruses, some of the most compelling representations of humans and their encounters with viral disease reflect this paradigmatic shift in knowledge and persist to this day in the artifacts of cultures the world over. Mythologies attributed viral disease to gods and derived truth from belief, whereas colonists understood enough about viruses to know that they could be used to bend fate in their favor during conquest. Cultural representations of viruses throughout human history challenge us to consider how we regard human disease today, making us more conscious of how impressionable we can be regardless of how right we think we are.
Smallpox: Scourge of the Earth
Smallpox was all-encompassing in terms of its impact on human imagination and its perception of disease etiology. Deities from cultures around the world were posited to be the sole forces that held power over who acquired the dreadful disease associated with variola virus. The Yoruba people of Benin and Nigeria worshipped Shapona, eldest son of their supreme god and ruler of the Earth. His dominion over humans made him the authority over smallpox, and his displeasure with an individual’s transgression led to outbreaks of the virus. Shapona’s likeness is often depicted through figurines at the focal point of shrines and usually includes a variety of adornments, including cowrie shells and latertite stone to make the statues’ surface pitted like pock marks. The cult mentality surrounding Shapona conferred a great deal of clout to his fetish priests, who could infect people with old smallpox scabs should they feel that someone had sinned.
Another instantiation of smallpox deification comes from India in the form of Shitala Mata. This goddess was born from the sacrificial fire of a prince who wanted to appease the supreme god, Brahma. As a result, she was called Shitala, or “the one who cools.” After her emergence, the Shitala was provided a companion (her donkey) and offered patronage over lentils, which represented the pock marks that would stick to people’s skin should she condemn them for their actions. A common motif in India’s spiritual tradition comes in the balance that a single deity maintains in his or her ascribed role. Shitala Mata may possess the ability to spread smallpox, but her storied hatred of dust could be used to drive her away. Likewise, a person who wished for her curative powers could clean their house of dust to supplicate her clemency. This is notable, mainly because smallpox is now known to be transmitted through fomites, so cleaning the house of an infected individual could actually prevent the virus’ spread to healthy individuals.
Smallpox emerges in countless artifacts and doctrines, including Catholicism’s patron saint of smallpox, St. Nicasius of Rheims, and Chinese mythology’s goddess of smallpox, T’ou-Shen Niang-Niang. In all of these traditions, smallpox is attributed to the caprice of a higher power, reflecting a resignation in the way humans thought of this etiological agent. Ultimately, the nature of smallpox infection, its clinical course, and effects on human life left very little room for people to exercise control over their fate, making them subject to an uncertainty that in their framework of the world could only match that of a god’s whims.
“Sing, O Muse, of the rage of the Lyssavirus”
Rabies lyssavirus has been documented in many forms throughout human history. More often than not, transmission of this particular virus is attributed to the bite of a dog carrying the virus in its saliva. In more recent times, lithographs depicting “mad dogs” running through the streets of urban centers were published in newspapers or other materials as advisories against contact with such dogs. However, such public admonishments have existed for thousands of years, dating back to the Eshunna Code of ancient Mesopotamia. This nearly 4,000-year-old codex alludes to the precautions one must take when encountering a “rageful” canine that foamed at the mouth. Later, in Greco-Roman mythology, the goddess Lyssa is often dispatched as an agent of higher-echelon gods to inflict “madness” on humans. In one representation, she wears a cap that resembles a dog’s head to symbolize her ability to evoke madness in dogs such that they attack humans.
Polio, Mumps, Herpes Oh My!
Viruses continue to captivate us in the way they have so masterfully defied what we call dogma to sustain themselves in humans. They make a spectacle of convention and can potentially tell us so much about our own biology. However, we regarded viruses differently before amassing our current body of knowledge. The causes of smallpox, madness, paralysis, and cervical deformities were once the will of gods, the work of unseen poisons, or the retribution for transgressions. I take great pride in the progress we have made in our approach to viruses, and even though they may not have such divine origins, they continue to fascinate and terrify us enough to continue our efforts to understand them.
