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By investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the distrust and violence that erupted with Ebola in 2014, Epidemics challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics, that invariably across time and space, epidemics provoked hatred, blaming of the 'other', and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases, particularly when diseases were mysterious, without known cures or preventive measures, as with AIDS during the last two decades of the twentieth century.
However, scholars and public intellectuals, especially post-AIDS, have missed a fundamental aspect of the history of epidemics. Instead of sparking hatred and blame, this study traces epidemics' socio-psychological consequences across time and discovers a radically different picture: that epidemic diseases have more often unified societies across class, race, ethnicity, and religion, spurring self-sacrifice and compassion.
List of contents
- Introduction: Hate, Politics, and Compassion
- Part One: Antiquity and the Middle Ages
- 1: Epidemics in Antiquity: The Moral Universe and Natural Causes
- 2: Ancient Epidemics: What the Oracles Had To Say
- 3: Black Death Persecution and Abandonment
- 4: Mechanisms for Unity: Saints and Plagues
- Part Two: Early Modernity
- 5: Syphilis: Naming and Blaming?
- 6: Plague Spreaders
- Part Three: Modernity: Epidemics of Hate
- 7: Cholera's First European Tour: The Story in the British Isles
- 8: Cholera on the Continent and in America
- 9: Cholera Violence: An Italian Story in Comparative Perspective
- 10: Cholera: A Comparative History of Disturbance
- 11: Smallpox Cruelty: The Case of North America
- 12: Smallpox and Collective Violence
- 13: Smallpox Violence in Victorian Britain
- Part IV: Modernity: Plagues of Politics
- 14: Plague since 1894: India
- 15: Plague Beyond India
- 16: Myths of Plague
- Part V: Modernity: Plagues of Compassion
- 17: Yellow Fever: Stories from Philadelphia and Memphis
- 18: Yellow Fever: The Broader Picture
- 19: The Great Influenza: A Forgotten Pandemic?
- 20: Quarantine and Blame
- 21: A Pandemic of Compassion
- 22: Comparative Vistas (I): The Great Influenza
- 23: Comparative Vistas (II): Beyond the Battlefields
- 24: Conclusion
- 25: Epilogue. HIV/AIDS: An Epidemic of Hate, Compassion, and Politics
- Bibliography and Appendix of Newspapers
About the author
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow, an Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Over the past sixteen years, he has focused on the history of popular unrest in late medieval and early modern Europe and on the history of disease and medicine. Cohn's latest two books are Popular Protest in Late Medieval English Towns (2013) and Cultures of Plague: Medical Thinking at the End of the Renaissance (OUP, 2010).
Summary
In this study, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. investigates thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the 2014 Ebola outbreak to challenge the dominant hypothesis that epidemics invariably provoke hatred, blaming of the 'other', and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases.
Additional text
The historical breadth of this book, with its meticulous attention to varied sources and contexts, is simply breathtaking. ... This book will interest students of the history of medicine as well as anyone seeking a historical and comparative exploration of epidemics. It is dense and detailed reading ... this book will appeal chiefly to specialists at the graduate level and above.
Report
...It is a lens that has once again become relevantto current events, and Cohn's book may well serve as a useful resourcefor other researchers who are taking a renewed interest in epidemics. Kristy Wilson Bowers, Assistant Professor; Department of History, College of Arts and Science,University of Missouri, USA
