Pandemics and diseases are the protagonists of human history

We cannot understand infectious diseases by looking at them separately, but only by experiencing them as protagonists of historical events and exploring how they affect and change human society.

This is roughly one of the key thoughts of the prominent Croatian and world science historian Mirko Dražen Grmek (1924-2000), by which he “definitely changed the view of the history of the disease”.

Grmek, formerly a member of the French Resistance Movement, president of the International Academy of History of Science, member of the Croatian and American Academy of Sciences, and laureate of three French academies as well as the Order of the Legion of Honor, has built on this thought the scientific notion of pathogenesis, which has made him highly respected.

At the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, founded by Grmek in 1960, the historian of medicine Martin Kuhar works today, explaining for Hina the notion of pathogenesis in the context of the current pandemic.

In the photo: PhD Martin Kuhar, MD, medical historian at the Division of History of Medical Sciences, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts

The full text is available at the link:

https://www.jutarnji.hr/life/zdravlje/pandemije-i-bolesti-su-protagonisti-ljudske-povijesti/10247185/