Foundation Images for the Study of the History of Yellow Fever
– PowerPoint and PDF files of ~200 images covering some of the most
interesting facets of the history of one of the most iconic
diseases/viruses of all. Many of the slides are from a never-completed
project mothballed in 2005. When, recently, I received a request for
several of the images, it seems like a good time to tweak the whole set:
replacing images with the highest resolution
copies I have found, adding quite a few additional interesting images,
adjusting some images in Photoshop to improve contrast/density/etc., and
adding a bit more text to provide additional context.
These
files do not represent the backbone of a history book – they are far
from comprehensive – they are quite parochial – they are like a file
cabinet full of random images and a trivial amount
of text, from which one can grab a few images for a lecture (virtual or
not), a paper, a thesis (there are many theses written by history
scholars on various social/societal aspects of epidemics), etc.
In
keeping with my lifelong fascination with images and with science
history, I have enjoyed using these images in concert with reading and
researching text-based resources. There are several
fine books and many, many scholarly articles on the history of yellow
fever, broad or narrow in scope, but all (in my view) in need of more
illustrations! Easily added, virtually, by having images rolling by on a
large high res monitor.
The files are quite large because the images are of high resolution (called high fidelity in PowerPoint) – all efforts I tried to compress the files led to discernible image deterioration, so there is no file compression of the PPTX file. For some mysterious reason, using “Slide Show” or “Present” directly from the open UTMB SharePoint file lowers the resolution of the images, so it seems best to download the file and use it in your own PowerPoint program. To do so, click “File” (far left in upper toolbar) > “Download As” > “Download a Copy” – presto!
The images in the PDF file were saved at 450dpi – images look good!
Still, if anyone wants an image at the highest res that I have, I would be glad to send a .jpg or .tif file by Dropbox.
\Fred Murphy