Chapter 1: Patient Zero
Douala, (former) German Kamerun, September 28 1914
George Eastland, ensign assigned to His Majesty's Ship the Cumberland, was fucking.
He was, quite obviously, not the first human to ever fuck nor would he be the last. What merits attention about this particular instance of fucking , is who exactly he was fucking. In this particular case it was Tchimi Ngako, a prostitute in a whorehouse just off the harbor in Douala. Douala had just yesterday been captured by British and French forces, which provided the occasion for Eastland’s fucking.
Tchimi had not always been a prostitute, however. Up until last month she had lived in a village in the thick forests of Kamerun, with her husband. A month ago, her husband had wasted away and died; of what, no one could say; and as she had no living family she had been forced to come to the city make a living. Six months before that, her husband had trapped two chimpanzees. While he was butchering one of the chimpanzees, his knife slipped and he cut his finger. He nevertheless continued to butcher the corpse. Three months before he had trapped the chimpanzee, it had acquired a mutant form of a virus endemic to chimpanzees but almost never seen in humans. This mutant virus, unlike others of its kind, was perfectly at home in a human host and was transmissible through many bodily fluids.
If George Eastland had known he would be the man to bring one of the greatest plagues the world has ever seen to the West, he might not have been so enthusiastic about fucking.
Alan Bachmann, A History of Venereal Disease, University of California Press 1971
…It is not known precisely when VID came to Europe. The disease was first recognized as a disease in the 1920s, by which time notable epidemics were already present in London, Glasgow, Paris, and Halifax. It is hypothesized that the index case was a British sailor, who acquired the disease somewhere in West Africa and transmitted the virus through sexual contact with prostitutes in Britain while on shore leave. From here it spread to other sailors and the public at large, and was transmitted to the rest of Europe by troop and ship movements. During the 1920s and 1930s epidemics were reported in India, South Africa, Egypt, the West Indies, the United States, and most countries in Western Europe.
It would not be until the rise of mass vaccination campaigns that the real threat of this disease would be recognized, however…
Douala, (former) German Kamerun, September 28 1914
George Eastland, ensign assigned to His Majesty's Ship the Cumberland, was fucking.
He was, quite obviously, not the first human to ever fuck nor would he be the last. What merits attention about this particular instance of fucking , is who exactly he was fucking. In this particular case it was Tchimi Ngako, a prostitute in a whorehouse just off the harbor in Douala. Douala had just yesterday been captured by British and French forces, which provided the occasion for Eastland’s fucking.
Tchimi had not always been a prostitute, however. Up until last month she had lived in a village in the thick forests of Kamerun, with her husband. A month ago, her husband had wasted away and died; of what, no one could say; and as she had no living family she had been forced to come to the city make a living. Six months before that, her husband had trapped two chimpanzees. While he was butchering one of the chimpanzees, his knife slipped and he cut his finger. He nevertheless continued to butcher the corpse. Three months before he had trapped the chimpanzee, it had acquired a mutant form of a virus endemic to chimpanzees but almost never seen in humans. This mutant virus, unlike others of its kind, was perfectly at home in a human host and was transmissible through many bodily fluids.
If George Eastland had known he would be the man to bring one of the greatest plagues the world has ever seen to the West, he might not have been so enthusiastic about fucking.
Alan Bachmann, A History of Venereal Disease, University of California Press 1971
…It is not known precisely when VID came to Europe. The disease was first recognized as a disease in the 1920s, by which time notable epidemics were already present in London, Glasgow, Paris, and Halifax. It is hypothesized that the index case was a British sailor, who acquired the disease somewhere in West Africa and transmitted the virus through sexual contact with prostitutes in Britain while on shore leave. From here it spread to other sailors and the public at large, and was transmitted to the rest of Europe by troop and ship movements. During the 1920s and 1930s epidemics were reported in India, South Africa, Egypt, the West Indies, the United States, and most countries in Western Europe.
It would not be until the rise of mass vaccination campaigns that the real threat of this disease would be recognized, however…
