"Unprecedented!" "Virtual," Yes, but Epidemics, No

Unprecedented! That word begins most newscasts these days. But yesterday I attended the virtual Commencement of 2020 Yale Divinity School graduates. (I’m class of 1976.) In the 319 years of its history, “virtual” was unprecedented.  However, the situation is not. Classes at YDS were suspended for six years during the Revolutionary War. During the global pandemic of 1917-18, over 700 citizens of New Haven died.

        Fevers and plagues seemed never unprecedented. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University 1781-1795, wrote in his diary on Feb. 10, 1794, that “the town was alarmed by the danger of spreading Scarlet Fever.” On March 15 a student died. The next day: “four students sick with Scarletina fever.” On March 31 President Stiles wrote, “I myself and wife taken sick . . . released many scholars to go home. . .” On April 2 Stiles discontinued all college activities.

       Then, just 3 months later, Stiles diary: “The Yellow fever brought in by a vessel has been lurking about and proves dreadful. More mortal than small pox.” And Scarlet fever, “tho’ much abated” was “yet extant.” Only half the students returned for the next term. September 5^th Stiles wrote about what we today call, “social distancing” and “contact tracing”: “Hitherto I have believed that by the care and vigilance of the Authy [Authorities] it might be guarded & its progress checked, as we could hitherto trace all instances. . .I begin to give up the possibility of preventing its spreadg [spreading].”

     About 5 months before he himself would die of a “bilious fever,” Stiles wrote a “Bill of Morty for New Haven the Year 1794,” based on his notebook of daily statistics on the epidemics. The data collected by Stiles and New Haven County physicians led to the founding of the city’s first board of health in 1795. The data were also used by Noah Webster (Yale 1778) in his pioneering 1799 work, “A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases” which became a standard text in early medical schools.” (from an article by Judith Ann Schiff, chief research archivist at the Yale University Library, published in Yale Alumni magazine, May/June 2020)

          Des Moines Register news release this afternoon, May 19, 2020: Officials report 15,296 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Iowa with 367 deaths statewide.  

    

          What a Christ-centered Yale Divinity School virtual commencement it was! Current Yale Divinity School dean, Gregory Sterling, quoted St. Paul in Romans and 2 Corinthians.  “The one who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on God we have set our hope. . .” (2 Cor. 1:10)