Paper short abstract:

The paper engages with mapping practices and will draw on examples reaching from Bubonic Plague to AIDS and Ebola to present mapping as a unique way of making epidemics evident.

Paper long abstract:

Practices of mapping have contributed to knowledge about epidemics throughout history. Mappings allowed to distinguish affected areas, they were crucial for installing and defending quarantines, and they helped to understand the dynamics and structures of disease which affected a number of people constrained by time and space. As such the history of epidemics and the history of their mapping could be understood as inseparable. In many ways plague can be understood as the historical archetype of disease mapping. As early as the 16th century mappings of plague crafted the original paradigm, which became a crucial tool in the 19th century history of medical geography. The paper will approach this history of geographical mapping of epidemics as yet another history of medical science, establishing medical evidence beyond the paradigms of a scientific medicine. As such, practices of mapping remained a key instrument in the making, distribution and popularization of (visual) knowledge about epidemic threats, reaching from Plague to AIDS and to the recent outbreaks of Ebola. The paper will draw on these examples to carve out the unique features of mapping practices in order to understand what kind of disease model is implied when mapped onto spatial and temporal data.