[Catastrophes--are they worse today than former?].

When we were asked to write an article on the history of catastrophes and our perception of it, we quickly got up to a point were we understood that such a theme could easily be handled in form of an entire book. Because this is virtually impossible and because we physicians are only "guests" in the fields of meteorology, seismology and political sciences, this paper reflects more our personal view and experiences of this very complex topic. But like Heraklit who said: "Ta Panta rhei."--"everything flows" and who argued that the world is a permanent becoming and vanishing, in which everything constantly changes, we argue that not only the world changes but also our perception of catastrophic events. Only the future will tell how bad the today and the past has been.