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A couple of years ago I read Timothy C. Winegard’s Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity by Timothy C. Winegard. It was a wonderful book, filled with hard science, history—specifically how the horse shaped human history. And indeed, how we shaped their history. Without humans, they might have gone extinct at the end of the last glacial period. With them, some groups of humans almost made other groups of humans extinct … But they also helped save humans from intense famines by being the best beast of burden humanity ever had, and our primary engine until just about 100 years ago.
Horse was fascinating and also, at times, whimsical. I think of it often, and find myself musing over things like the fact that just about all cultures in Asia, Europe, North Africa, South America, and North America find horses beautiful. Is this because the cultures that didn’t have horses were quickly wiped out in those regions? (Diseases made them not as successful south of the Sahel.)
(Before Europeans really made inroads in South and North America the horse did, and Native American tribes took to them fast, and used them to subjugate other tribes, and to make some of the most successful stands against the Europeans when they did arrive … but I digress.)
Anywho, because I loved that book I picked up this book, Mosquito.
Did I like it …
Like might be too strong a word. I was riveted, much like one is riveted to a horror movie or the scene of a car crash. Mosquitoes are not our friends. Diseases spread by mosquitoes, chiefly malaria, but also yellow fever, dengue, and recently West Nile, and Zika have, according to some experts, killed more people than the black death, tuberculosis, and AIDS combined.
The book describes these diseases. Vividly. And, for the record, anyone who thinks we live in a “dystopia” doesn’t read history. (Yellow fever … shudder.)
But, for all the suffering mosquito-borne diseases have caused, they’re also part of the reason I’m writing you from the United States of America, not … well, whatever we would have been called if the Brits had won the Revolutionary War. (British troops weren’t “seasoned”, i.e., hadn’t had repeated bouts of malaria like many of the southern colonists in that era, and had less resistance.)
(I’m not sure I think the Brits could have won in the U.S.. We had a huge hinterland and a population that is by temperament prone to distrust authority—yes, even then. We were also armed and unruly … so not much has changed! But I believe the mosquito made the war shorter.)
During the Civil War, mosquito-borne malaria sometimes helped the South and sometimes helped the North. They were non-partisan! However, they definitely helped the North win Vicksburg. The Northern soldiers may not have been as “seasoned,” but Ulysses S. Grant made sure they had plenty of quinine.
If you like histories of warfare, this book will fascinate you with the details of battles in the Asian, Eurasian, and European theaters shaped by mosquitos.
And you’ll never forget it and think of it often.
Which … is a good thing … right?