Television Reviews : A History Lesson in Mankind’s Plagues

“Plagues,” tonight’s study of such deadly modern epidemics as cholera and malaria, may not be the most exciting documentary ever made for PBS, but it’s an interesting and worthwhile history lesson nonetheless (9-10 p.m. on Channel 28).

Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher and medical historian Baruch Blumberg, who does a decent hosting job, provides a horror-movie-type refresher course on one of the worst epidemics of all time: The Spanish Flu of 1918 that struck 1 billion people worldwide and killed 25 million, with most victims dying in less than a week.

Survivors recall its frighteningly fast spread, while Blumberg explains how the normally mild flu virus became so radically different and deadly and how the epidemic eventually stopped on its own only when enough people became immune to the virus.

Blumberg also retraces, sometimes a bit tediously, the steps epidemiologists took when they deduced the mysterious sources of cholera in mid-19th Century London and Legionnaire’s Disease in 1976 Philadelphia.

To show the dynamic nature of nature, Blumberg uses the amazing story of the 20 pairs of imported European rabbits that quickly overran Australia in the 19th Century and had to be killed off in 1950 by a hideous virus that was introduced into their population. The virus’ effect was devastating intitally, but over time the rabbits became resistant to it and the virus itself lost some of its virulence.

Produced by Alan Goldberg for PBS station WHYY in Philadelphia, “Plagues” never really seems to make any big points or arrive at any grand conclusions. It puts the size and impact of the AIDS epidemic in some perspective with the chilling but largely unheadlined fact that malaria, which Blumberg says may have killed half of the humans who’ve ever died, still kills 1 million people every year. It also reminds us of the great and mysterious powers of nature, as well the incredible progress--and continued limitations--of modern medical science.