The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History

Description

In this sweeping approach to the history of disease, the author, a historian chronicles perceptions and responses to plague and pestilence over two thousand years of Western history. He frames disease as a multidimensional construct, situated at the intersection of history, politics, culture, and medicine, and rooted in mentalities and social relations as much as in biological conditions of pathology. He shows how diseases affect social and political change, reveal social tensions, and are mediated both within and outside the realm of scientific medicine. Contents Tables Acknowledgments Introduction One: The Western Inheritance: Greek and Roman Ideas about Disease Two: Medieval Diseases and Responses Three: The Great Plague Pandemic Four: New Diseases and Transatlantic Exchanges Five: Continuity and Change: Magic, Religion, Medicine, and Science, 500–1700 Six: Disease and the Enlightenment Seven: Cholera and Sanitation Eight: Tuberculosis and Poverty Nine: Disease, Medicine, and Western Imperialism Ten: The Scientific View of Disease and the Triumph of Professional Medicine Eleven: The Apparent End of Epidemics Twelve: Disease and Power Notes Suggestions for Further Reading Index