From plague to AIDS, epidemics have been the most spectacular diseases to afflict human societies. This volume examines the way in which these great crises have influenced ideas, how they have helped to shape theological, political and social thought, and how they have been interpreted and understood in the intellectual context of their time.

‘Epidemics and Ideas shows how epidemics evoke a series of recognisable reactions and responses from society beyond the specifics of pathogen, place or time. It is a very modern book, which brings successfully together history, anthropology, sociology and other so-called social sciences with medicine, or at least with public health. It goes far beyond the earlier appreciation of the relationship between human society and diseases ... [and] brings a vast specialised literature about past epidemics and the response of society to them within reach of the general reader’.

Source: New Scientist

‘… a remarkable cohesive and delightfully variegated book that brings medical and biological history into firm and fruitful contact with intellectual and social history … This is, in short, a splendid book – subtle, informed, sophisticated and coherent. It shows how successfully the social history of epidemics has come of age in recent years’.

Source: The Journal of Social History