In his book The Chain of Infections, the science historian Andreas Bernard starts from the hypothesis that our ability to fight epidemics is linked to how we are able to construct the narratives surrounding them. In addition to the strong medical component of the fight against epidemics – developing vaccines, researching immunity – the questions of how epidemics and their outbreaks are mapped, and whether they can be mapped at all, appear to be central to successful containment. Andreas Bernard illustrates this connection in his studies on the history of smallpox, cholera, influenza, poliomyelitis and the early days of AIDS, a connection that, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, has become increasingly clear since Spring 2020. He examines to what extent the triumph of bacteriology in the late 19th century brought about a new way of depicting infection processes, one which today still utilizes the same narrative forms and verbal imagery. He also discusses the origin and end of epidemics as two neuralgic points in the epidemic narrative, elaborates on the accompanying narrative of "immunity" that has been around since the 18th century, and analyzes the importance of communication media such as the letter, the telegram and the current tracking apps – the news from all three of these being in a race against the diseases’ progression.
Andreas Bernard's The Chain of Infections combines medical-historical and narrative-theoretical research and creates an approach to the history of epidemics that has so far received little attention, one which also enables a new look at the COVID pandemic of the past few years.
"The parallel between the modern crisis of storytelling and the futility of reconstructing chains of infection in large cities is one of the interdisciplinary highlights of the book." - Tagesspiegel, Ulrike Baureithel
