oa Met geschiedenis een pandemie te lijf

Historical thinking in aid of pandemic policies

This article starts from the premise that history – or historia – was an essential part of both medicine and policymaking. Before the nineteenth century it was considered an epistemic genre based on careful observations, followed by a systematic writing down of peculiarities. Historiae were important as a physician- or citizen-resource for future reference and functioned as a way of legitimising treatments and policies. Because of this shared epistemology, medicine and politics could productively work together in times of (epidemic) crisis. We suggest that in our efforts to prepare for the next pandemic, we should revisit the genre of historia as a productive way of working towards better policymaking.