“In history, one disease hunts another”

The cross: have cancer diseases disappeared during history?

Stanis Perez: It happened yes. In the Middle Ages, for example, you have the black plague which, after having made terrible ravages in the 14th century, declines as and when, until the last large epidemic in 1720. But what history also shows is that a disease hunts another. This brings us to the concept of pathocenosis, developed in the late 1960s by Mirko Grmek, a great historian of medicine still very respected today. By working on the history of diseases, he realized that there was a kind of natural balance which was established between the great diseases, whether viral or bacterial. Plague, leprosy, syphilis, variolate, tuberculosis, cholera … The head of the plagues changes from one era to the other, but when one takes over, the other steps back. Is there a logic in all of this? Difficult to say, but it refers to a very general and very important idea which is that nature self -regulates and that different forms of life – and diseases are one, even if they kill us – are forces that are balanced.