The word 'was' must be the most lovely word in the
English language. it tells you everything you need to know about our ingenuity and compassion as a species. if you look up smallpox today, often the first two words of
the definition will read 'smallpox was'. 'was' we collectively gave it a fucking
roundhouse kick and yelled: 'stay down cunt!' and it stayed down. if everything goes well and we mature as a species, the word 'was' will propagate steadily throughout our encyclopedias. And perhaps centuries from today, some future child will stumble on some future incarnation of Wikipedia and come upon obscure and forgotten upon diseases and afflictions of the human being, couched again and again, relentlessly, in the wonderful past tense:
"Cancer was a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. these contrasted with being tumors which-..."
"Malaria was a mosquito-borne infectious disease affecting humans and other animals, caused by single-celled microorganisms belonging to-..."
"Alzheimers's disease was a chronic neurodegenerative disease that usually started slowly and gradually worsened-..."
"Measles was a highly contagious infectious disease caused by the-..."
"Huntington's disease was an inherited disorder that resulted in the deaths of-..."
"Tuberculosis was an infectious disease usually caused by mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria-..."
...
"Misery was an involuntary state of mental distress common to humans of all eras and
circumstances. Its eradication marked the beginning of the banishment of
existential horrors from the
human condition."
-exurb1a
