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Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the use of the term "hero" has been widespread. This is especially common in the context of healthcare workers and it is now unremarkable to see large banners on hospital exteriors that say "heroes work here". There is more to be gleaned from the rhetoric of heroism than just awareness of public appreciation, however. Calling physicians and nurses heroes for treating sick people indicates something about the concept of medicine and medical professionals. In this essay, I will examine three aspects of the social role of medicine exposed by the language of heroism. One, if a hero is someone who goes above and the call of duty, then does that mean exposing oneself to risk of infection is no longer a duty of physicians (as it used to be)? If so, does that mean the "profession" of medicine is much like any other business? Two, physicians and nurses are not the only "heroes" this go-around. Anyone deemed essential to the US "infrastructure" is designated by the US government as having "special responsibilities" to remain at their posts for the public good, which explicitly puts physicians in the same category as sewage workers and grocery store cashiers. Three, what does it mean to belong to a profession that does (or does not) have self-sacrifice and risk-taking as part of its mission-especially a profession that rarely gets called upon to practice these obligations?

Decades ago, in his foundational essay on the early days of the AIDS crisis, medical historian Charles Rosenberg wrote, "epidemics start at a moment in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, following a plot line of increasing revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual and collective character, then drift toward closure." In the course of epidemics, societies grappled with sudden and unexpected mortality and also returned to fundamental questions about core social values. "Epidemics," Rosenberg wrote, "have always provided occasion for retrospective moral judgment" (Rosenberg 1989, pp. 2, 9). Following Rosenberg's observations, this essay places COVID-19 in the context of epidemic history to examine common issues faced during health crises-moral, political, social, and individual. Each disease crisis unfolds in its own time and place. Yet, despite specific contexts, we can see patterns and recurring concerns in the history of pandemics: (1) pandemics and disease crises in the past, along with public health responses to them, have had implications for civil liberties and government authority; (2) disease crises have acted as a sort of stress test on society, revealing, amplifying or widening existing social fissures and health disparities; (3) pandemics have forced people to cope with uncertain knowledge about the origin and nature of disease, the best sources of therapies, and what the future will hold after the crisis. While historians are not prognosticators, understanding past experience offers new perspectives for the present. The essay concludes by identifying aspects of history relevant to the road ahead.