Infectious Diseases and Famous People Who Succumbed to Them

I remember when I first announced to my family that I would go to Houston to study to become a clinical microbiologist. My grandfather told me that my great grandfather, Isaac Schauer, died in New York City during the 1918 influenza pandemic. He had been a healthy man in his early 40s prior to contracting this disease. Shortly thereafter, I discovered that Eleanor Roosevelt had died of tuberculosis. These early encounters with relatives or historical figures who succumbed to infectious diseases led me to a career-long fascination with death from infectious diseases and history. This article examines seven illnesses — tuberculosis, influenza, infectious diarrhea, syphilis, bacterial pneumonia, bacterial sepsis, and malaria, and the individuals throughout history who contracted and died from them.