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Thomas Rowlandson caricature, in which fever (a hairy monster) and ague (a snake-like creature) attack a man huddled in front of a fireplace. On a pale brown background, with the GHIL podcast logo of microphone and headphones in a circle.
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Interview

Stefanie Gänger, Pascale Siegrist and Kim König

What is a fever?

Examining illness, 1770-1830

5 September 2025

(0:18 h)

Thomas Rowlandson caricature, in which fever (a hairy monster) and ague (a snake-like creature) attack a man huddled in front of a fireplace. On a pale brown background, with the GHIL podcast logo of microphone and headphones in a circle.

Interview

Stefanie Gänger, Pascale Siegrist and Kim König

What is a fever?
Examining illness, 1770-1830

Chills, aches and hot flushes. What exactly were people describing when they complained of fever around 1800? In this episode, host Kim König and GHIL Research Fellow Pascale Siegrist talk to Stefanie Gänger, Professor of Modern History at Heidelberg University. They discuss the research behind her lecture on the history of fever and febrile diseases in the French, Iberian and British Empires from the 1770s to the 1820s, a period during which these diseases were widely considered to be the world's most common and fatal.

Don't miss Stefanie Gänger's accompanying GHIL Joint Lecture on “‘The Most Common and Fatal of All Diseases’: Histories of Fever, 1770-1830”.

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