HEALTH AND THE MYRMIDONS
Salvador Dalí’s Daddy Longlegs of the Evening―Hope! was inspired by war and contains imagery that recalls its darkness. The Myrmidons (ant-men) were a prolific warrior race patterned after ants from whom they allegedly descended by divine transformation. The term still evokes somehow the ants of origin―the same plentiful arthropods Dalí sprinkled liberally in his works―their glistening bodies clustered around the edges, foreshadowing decomposition. Among health threats, viruses are like the Myrmidons in their sheer numbers. Even though several thousand have been identified, the large masses remain at large. With each new identification, the public health burden increases. This is where Dalí would insert daddy longlegs. For with each identification, the opportunity also arises for new vaccines or other prevention strategies and effective treatments, as in the case of many known viruses, including the formidable HIV. Like a surrealist painting, emergence of viruses around the globe features realities that by all appearances have nothing to link them, often in settings that by all appearances are not linked. The challenge is in identifying and controlling the Myrmidons, one by one.
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dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1805.AC1805
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