Description - Epidemics and History by Sheldon J. Watts
This book is a major and wide-ranging study of the great epidemic scourges of humanity-plague, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, cholera, and yellow fever/malaria-over the last six centuries. It will become the standard account of the way diseases arising through chance, through reckless environmental change engineered by man, or through a combination of each were interpreted in Western Europe and in the colonized world.
"This trenchant book provides a salutary antidote to world health complacency, past and present."-Roy Porter, The Times (London)
"Watts' . . . mastery of six centuries of Western-influenced infectious disease and sanitation history is impressive. He also writes with authority about the pre-modern and modern medical profession."-Claire Panosian, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Watts offers solid, stunning examples of Western idiocy that created superhighways for once-obscure microbes, leading to horrendous epidemics. . . . His is a perspective that Western, particularly Caucasian, policy-makers would do well to comprehend."-Laurie Garrett, Foreign Affairs
"The convenience of so much history of diseases in one place is obvious. [An] engrossing book."-Gert Brieger, M.D., New England Journal of Medicine
"An important contribution to our understanding of the history of disease, public health, and imperialism."-Suzanne Austin Alchon, American Historical Review
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(229mm x 152mm x 24mm)
Yale University Press
Publisher: Yale University Press
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