Michael Denis Biddiss

Frederick Fox Cartwright

A newly revised edition of an established classic in the history of medicine. Arising from collaboration between a doctor and a historian, Disease and History offers the general reader a wide-ranging and most accessible account of some of the ways in which disease has left its often dramatic mark on the past. It reviews, for example, the impact made by bubonic plague and other infections upon the ancient and medieval worlds; the likely role of syphilis in the careers of Henry VIII and Ivan the Terrible; the significance of smallpox for the conquest of Mexico; and the contribution of typhus to Napoleon's downfall and of haemophilia to the collapse of Tsarist rule in Russia. Other topics surveyed include the influence of tropical diseases in the history of the colonization of Africa, and the global death-toll taken by the so-called 'Spanish' influenza of 1918-9. The authors show how successive eras have registered some progress against pestilence, even while also experiencing confrontation with new and often unforeseen threats. Thus the final section of the book highlights how this field of history serves to illuminate many of the current problems now facing a world where disease - especially when combined with war, famine, and ecological recklessness - presents an ongoing challenge to human survival. 'A study whose outstanding virtues are economy, clarity and readability.' New Statesman 'A welcome updating and careful revision of one of the pioneering accounts of the social history of medicine.' Roy Porter, Professor of the Social History of Medicine, UCL 'Fascinating and highly recommended.' Library Journal

Third Edition

Disease & History

Cites specific instances in which disease affecting powerful individuals and societies has influenced the course of history

Disease and History

Maria Wyke

This multi-disciplinary volume brings together essays illustrating the diversity of forms in which the legacy of Antiquity has been used, and abused, by the Modern West. Here classicists and non-classicists combine to show how historiography, anthropology, philosophy, political thought, archaeology, poetry, drama, the novel, music, architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, and film can be rewardingly juxtaposed as sites rich in the appropriation of Greco-Roman culture. The book has a chronological span running from the 17th to the late-20th century, and it ranges geographically from Britain to Europe and the USA. The authors remind us that it is often not the past itself so much as constructed images thereof which do most to mould our cultural consciousness. The collection discloses the pluralism and flexibility of Antiquity as an important modern symbolic source, and the variety of socio-cultural circumstances which have oriented us towards it. At many points these essays also analyse signs of a certain desire for release from a tradition viewed as troublesome and constraining. Yet they also tend to confirm that, whenever we seek to escape classical culture, we are still likely to be held within its trammels - that, even when we think that we have thrown it off, we seem fated to remain within its protean thrall.

Michael Denis Biddiss

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