Thanks to the invention of the electron microscope, we can now observe very tiny molecules that cannot be seen by the naked eye, or even by a regular light microscope, and that includes viruses. Thanks to this, we now can see clearly what the entities that attack the human body, and we can now easily anthropomorphize them. But what was it like before we could see these viruses? How did we portray them?
Back then, what we only knew was diseases were “invisible, supernatural, and terrifying.” And so we used representations that fit on these said qualities, like the Grim Reaper and demons.
"Little figures of demons that were physically attacking the body," offers Jared Gardner. He's a professor of popular culture at the Ohio State University with an interest in medical humanities and cartoons. He curated a recent exhibition on the topic called Drawing Blood. "A lot of the early anthropomorphizations are less about disease and more about pain," he explains. "Like little dogs biting our feet for gout, for example."
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(Image Credit: UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library)