Seven insights from Albert Camus’s Plague about epidemics, public health and morality

For Albert Camus, plague was both a fact of life and a powerful metaphor for the human condition. Camus engaged most explicitly and extensively with the subject of plague in his 1947 novel, The Plague (La peste), which chronicles an outbreak of what is presumably cholera in the French-Algerian city...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of public health (Oxford, England) Vol. 46; no. 4; pp. e675 - e677
Main Author Kraaijeveld, Steven R
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Oxford University Press 01.12.2024
Subjects
COVID-19 - epidemiology
Epidemics - history
Famous Persons
History, 20th Century
Humans
Medicine in Literature - history
Morals
Pandemics - history
Plague - epidemiology
Plague - history
Plague - prevention & control
Public Health - history
SARS-CoV-2
Camus
epidemiology
epidemics
ethics
public health
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Summary:For Albert Camus, plague was both a fact of life and a powerful metaphor for the human condition. Camus engaged most explicitly and extensively with the subject of plague in his 1947 novel, The Plague (La peste), which chronicles an outbreak of what is presumably cholera in the French-Algerian city of Oran. I often thought of this novel—and what it might teach us—during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, I discuss seven important insights from The Plague about epidemics, public health and morality.
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ISSN:1741-3842
1741-3850
1741-3850
DOI:10.1093/pubmed/fdae267