Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present

Description

A wide-ranging study that illuminates the connection between epidemic diseases and societal change, from the Black Death to Ebola This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks at how mass infectious outbreaks have shaped society, from the Black Death to today. In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history, and warfare. A multidisciplinary and comparative investigation of the medical and social history of the major epidemics, this volume touches on themes such as the evolution of medical therapy, plague literature, poverty, the environment, and mass hysteria. In addition to providing historical perspective on diseases such as smallpox, cholera, and tuberculosis, Snowden examines the fallout from recent epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Ebola and the question of the world's preparedness for the next generation of diseases. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Humoral Medicine: The Legacy of Hippocrates and Galen 3. Overview of the Three Plague Pandemics: 541 to ca. 1950 4. Plague as a Disease 5. Responses to Plague 6. Smallpox before Edward Jenner 7. The Historical Impact of Smallpox 8. War and Disease: Napoleon, Yellow Fever, and the Haitian Revolution 9. War and Disease: Napoleon, Dysentery, and Typhus in Russia, 1812 10. The Paris School of Medicine 11. The Sanitary Movement 12. The Germ Theory of Disease 13. Cholera 14. Tuberculosis in the Romantic Era of Consumption 15. Tuberculosis in the Unromantic Era of Contagion 16. The Third Plague Pandemic: Hong Kong and Bombay 17. Malaria and Sardinia: Uses and Abuses of History 18. Polio and the Problem of Eradication 19. HIV/AIDS: An Introduction and the Case of South Africa 20. HIV/AIDS: The Experience of the United States 21. Emerging and Reemerging Diseases 22. Dress Rehearsals for the Twenty-First Century: SARS and Ebola Notes Selected Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z