Epidemics And Pandemics: From Ancient Plagues To Modern-Day Threats

774 Pages·2021·26.558 MB·English

by  Joseph P. Byrne, Jo N. Hays

Epidemics and Pandemics

Epidemics and Pandemics
From Ancient Plagues to Modern-Day
Threats
VOLUME 1
Joseph P. Byrne and Jo N. Hays
Copyright © 2021 by ABC-CLIO, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in
writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Byrne, Joseph P., author. | Hays, J. N., 1938- author.
Title: Epidemics and pandemics : from ancient plagues to modern-day threats
/ Joseph P. Byrne and Jo N. Hays.
Description: Santa Barbara : ABC-CLIO, LLC, [2021] | Includes
bibliographical references and index. | Contents: v. 1. — v. 2. — Set.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020026560 (print) | LCCN 2020026561 (ebook) | ISBN
9781440863806 (v. 1 ; hardcover) | ISBN 9781440863813 (v. 2 ; hardcover)
| ISBN 9781440863783 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781440863790 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Epidemics—History. | Communicable diseases—History. |
Diseases and history.
Classification: LCC RA649 .B97 2021 (print) | LCC RA649 (ebook) | DDC
614.4/9—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026560
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026561
ISBN: 978-1-4408-6378-3 (set)
978-1-4408-6380-6 (vol. 1)
978-1-4408-6381-3 (vol. 2)
978-1-4408-6379-0 (ebook)
25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available as an eBook.
Greenwood
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC
ABC-CLIO, LLC
147 Castilian Drive
Santa Barbara, California 93117
www.abc-clio.com
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
To those across the globe who are working so hard, and often at great risk,
to make daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic tolerable and perhaps
even possible.
—Joseph P. Byrne
To Drs. Michelle Carlon, Daniel Torres, and Donald Nash, who contributed
perhaps more than they realized to my completion of a work about epidemi-
ology, and to Roz, with thanks and love.
—Jo N. Hays

Contents
VOLUME 1
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction xv
Part 1: The Fundamentals
1. A Look Inside: Pathogens and the Human Body 3
The Types of Pathogens That Cause Infectious Disease 4
The Human Body Fights Back: The Immune System, Resistance, and
Immunity 11
The Damage That Pathogens Can Cause Inside the Human Body 15
Various Symptoms: The Signs on the Outside 19
Sources and Further Reading 22
2. Gateways for Pathogens: Sources, Hosts, Vectors, and Contracting
Disease 25
Infectious Diseases: Reservoirs, Hosts, and Pathogen Sources 26
“Catching Diseases”: How Microscopic Pathogens Enter the Human Body 33
Parasitic Worms and Disease 41
Sources and Further Reading 43
3. Outbreaks, Epidemics, and Pandemics 45
Outbreak: Disease Occurring within Limited Populations 48
Epidemic: When Disease Spreads beyond Limited Populations 53
Pandemic: Beyond an Epidemic in Space, Severity, and Duration 55
Sources and Further Reading 58
4. Confronting Infectious Disease: Before Germ Theory 61
Theories of Health and Disease before the Discovery of Germs 62
Campaigns against Plague before the Discovery of Germs 71
Nineteenth-century Medical Achievements before the Discovery of Germs 76
Sources and Further Reading 82
viii Contents
5. Battles against Infectious Disease: Triumph of Germ Theory 85
Discovering and Subduing the Germ: Major Medical Advances from Louis Pasteur
to Unravelling the Genome 86
Major Public Health Advances of the Twentieth Century 94
A World War against Disease: International Organization and Efforts 101
Sources and Further Reading 107
6. Epidemic Disease in the Twenty-First Century 109
Perfect Storms: Social, Economic, and Political Conditions Conducive to
Disease 110
Continuing Diseases 115
New and Emerging Diseases 120
Reemerging Diseases 127
Frontiers of Medicine: Trends in Prevention and Treatment 130
Some Contemporary Global Public Health Initiatives 132
Sources and Further Reading 135
Part 2: Epidemics and Human Society
7. Economics and Epidemic Disease 141
Economics and the Spread of Pathogens 142
Wealth, Poverty, and Disease 149
Economic Effects of Epidemics 155
State Economic Intervention in Disease Prevention and Control 159
Sources and Further Reading 161
8. Governments, Politics, and Plagues 165
Plagues and Governments in the Premodern World 166
The Age of Cholera and Nineteenth-Century International Cooperation 173
AIDS and the Modern State in the 1980s 179
Epilogue: COVID-19 183
Sources and Further Reading 184
9. Religion, Magic, and Epidemic Disease 187
Religious Causal Explanations: From Apollo to Ebola 188
Religious Responses to Disease 191
Religious Factors in Spreading Disease 198
Effects of Epidemic Disease on Religion 203
Magic as Cause and Cure 207
Sources and Further Reading 208
10. War and Epidemics 211
The Gathering: Mobilization, Training, Disease, and Infection Prevention 212
Before the Shooting Starts: Camp and Garrison Life and Disease 213
When the Marching Starts 215
War, Disease, and the Noncombatant 223
Biological Warfare 227
Contents ix
When the Shooting Stops 229
Sources and Further Reading 232
11. Colonialism, Slavery, Racism, and Epidemic Disease 233
Contact: Initial Shocks 233
Slave Life in the Americas 246
Race, Ethnicity, and Disease 249
Sources and Further Reading 255
12. Sex and Epidemic Disease 259
Pathogens and STDs 260
Historical Perspectives on Venereal Diseases 266
The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s 272
From Transmission to Epidemic 274
Sources and Further Reading 276
13. Media and Epidemics from Gutenberg to AIDS 279
Early Popular Press and Epidemic Disease 281
Emerging Telecommunication and Mass Media 287
Mass Media and AIDS in the 1980s 294
Sources and Further Reading 298
14. Disease in the Literary, Visual, and Performing Arts 301
The Arts and the Second Plague Pandemic 302
Tuberculosis, Romanticism, and Realism 307
AIDS and the Arts 314
Fictional Diseases in Contemporary Films and Novels 321
Sources and Further Reading 324
VOLUME 2
1. Malaria in Ancient Rome 1
2. First Plague Pandemic, 541–747 7
3. Smallpox Epidemic in Japan, 735–737 15
4. Leprosy in Medieval Europe 19
5. The Black Death Begins: The Second Plague Pandemic, 1346–1352 25
6. Epidemics in Sixteenth-Century America 45
7. “French Disease” in Sixteenth-Century Europe 59
8. Epidemics and the Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 67
9. Plague in Italian Cities, 1630s 73
10. Epidemics in China, 1635–1644 81
11. Plague in London, 1665 87