Epidemics and Ideas
Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence
$55.99 (C)
Part of Past and Present Publications
- Editors:
- Terence Ranger, University of Oxford
- Paul Slack, University of Oxford
- Date Published: January 1996
- availability: Available
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521558310
$
55.99
(C)
Paperback
Other available formats:
eBook
Looking for an examination copy?
This title is not currently available for examination. However, if you are interested in the title for your course we can consider offering an examination copy. To register your interest please contact collegesales@cambridge.org providing details of the course you are teaching.
-
Epidemic diseases have always been a test of the ability of human societies to withstand sudden shocks. How are such large mortalities and the illness of large proportions of the population to be explained and dealt with? How have the sources of disease been identified and controls imposed? The chapters in this book, by acknowledged experts in the history of their periods, look at the ways in which the great epidemic diseases of the past--from classical Athens to the present day--have shaped not only our views of medicine and disease, but the ways in which people have defined the "health" of society in general terms.
Read more- A wide-ranging volume of interdisciplinary essays covering ancient times to our own day
- Relates the problems of AIDS to those of previous great epidemics worldwide
- Includes many outstanding contributors who write across a broad canvas and with the widest terms of reference
Reviews & endorsements
"The high scholarly quality of the essays is sustained throughout the book...This book will be of interest not only to the medical profession, but to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and statesmen." The New England Journal of Medicine
See more reviews"Like history itself, this book does not contain any simple answers. But it will provoke creative reflection, and the world needs all the insight it can muster." New Scientist
"There are 11 excellent essays in this volume, which collectively and individually illustrate that epidemics cause no necessary or particular cluster of human responses....The contents of this book deserve exhaustive review, for in every essay the results of these case studies confound commonplace assumptions about the history of epidemics...a dynamic, state-of-the-art collection, containing much of the best current research in the social history of epidemics." American Scientist
"...a remarkably 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." William H. McNeill, Journal of Social History
"...will be of great interest to those concerned with the historical context of and societal response to diseases, such as AIDS, Legionnaire's disease, hantavirus, etc." Michael Zimmermann, Chronic Hepatitis: Morphology and Nomenclature
Customer reviews
Not yet reviewed
Be the first to review
Review was not posted due to profanity
×Product details
- Date Published: January 1996
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521558310
- length: 360 pages
- dimensions: 213 x 140 x 23 mm
- weight: 0.46kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
1. Introduction Paul Slack
2. Epidemic, ideas and classical Athenian society James Longrigg
3. Disease, dragons and saints: the management of epidemics in the Dark Ages Peregrine Horden
4. Epidemic disease in formal and popular thought in early Islamic Society Lawrence I. Conrad
5. Plague and perceptions of the poor in early modern Italy Brian Pullan
6. Dearth, dirt and fever epidemics: rewriting the history of British 'public health', 1780–1850 John V. Pickstone
7. Epidemics and revolutions: cholera in nineteenth-century Europe Richard J. Evans
8. Hawaiian depopulation as a model for the Amerindian experience A. W. Crosby
9. Plague panic and epidemic politics in India, 1896–1914 Rajnarayan Chandavarkar
10. Plagues of beasts and men
prophetic responses to epidemic in eastern and southern Africa Terence Ranger
11. Syphilis in colonial East and Central Africa: the social construction of an epidemic Megan Vaughan
12. The early years of AIDS in the United Kingdom 1981–6: historical perspectives Virginia Berridge
Index.
Related Books
Sorry, this resource is locked
Please register or sign in to request access. If you are having problems accessing these resources please email lecturers@cambridge.org
Register Sign in» Proceed
You are now leaving the Cambridge University Press website. Your eBook purchase and download will be completed by our partner www.ebooks.com. Please see the permission section of the www.ebooks.com catalogue page for details of the print & copy limits on our eBooks.
Continue ×Are you sure you want to delete your account?
This cannot be undone.
Thank you for your feedback which will help us improve our service.
If you requested a response, we will make sure to get back to you shortly.
×