Hays pays close attention to the relationships between poverty and power and disease, using contemporary case studies to support his argument that diseases concentrate their pathological effects on the poor, while elites associate the cause of disease with the culture and habits of the poor.
Epidemics and Human Response in Western History
Paperback
Publication Date: 01/09/1998
In this sweeping approach to the history of disease, historian J.N. Hays chronicles perceptions and responses to plague and pestilence over two thousand years of western history. Hays frames disease as a multi-dimensional 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. Beginning with the legacy of Greek, Roman and early Christian ideas about disease, the book then discusses many of the dramatic epidemics from the 14th through the 20th centuries, moving from leprosy and bubonic plague through syphilis, smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, influenza and poliomyelitis to AIDS. Hays examines the devastating exchange of diseases between cultures and continents that ensued during the age of exploration. He also describes disease through the lenses of medical theory, public health, folk traditions and government response. The history of epidemics is also the history of their victims.
Hays pays close attention to the relationships between poverty and power and disease, using contemporary case studies to support his argument that diseases concentrate their pathological effects on the poor, while elites associate the cause of disease with the culture and habits of the poor.
Hays pays close attention to the relationships between poverty and power and disease, using contemporary case studies to support his argument that diseases concentrate their pathological effects on the poor, while elites associate the cause of disease with the culture and habits of the poor.
- ISBN:
- 9780813525280
- 9780813525280
- Category:
- Epidemiology & medical statistics
- Format:
- Paperback
- Publication Date:
- 01-09-1998
- Language:
- English
- Publisher:
- Rutgers University Press
- Country of origin:
- United States
- Pages:
- 380
- Dimensions (mm):
- 234x156x19mm
- Weight:
- 0.53kg
Click 'Notify Me' to get an email alert when this item becomes available
Great!
Click on Save to My Library / Lists
Click on Save to My Library / Lists
Select the List you'd like to categorise as, or add your own
Here you can mark if you have read this book, reading it or want to read
Awesome! You added your first item into your Library
Great! The fun begins.
Click on My Library / My Lists and I will take you there
Click on My Library / My Lists and I will take you there
Reviews
Be the first to review The Burdens of Disease.
Share This Book: