J. N. Hays. Epidemics and Pandemics: Their Impacts on Human History

     Great pandemics have resulted in significant death tolls and major social disruption. Other “virgin soil” epidemics have struck down large percentages of populations that had no previous contact with newly introduced microbes. Written by a specialist in the history of science and medicine, the essays in this volume discuss pandemics and epidemics affecting Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia, covering diseases in ancient times to the present. Each entry combines biological and social information to form a picture of the significance of epidemics that have shaped world history.

Table of contents     

Preface

1. Epidemic in Athens, 430—427 BC

2. Malaria in Ancient Rome

3. Plague of the Antonines

4. First plague pandemic, 541—747

5. Smallpox epidemic in Japan, 735—737

6. Leprosy in Medieval Europe

7. Second plague pandemic, 1346—1844

8. “French disease” in sixteenth-century Europe

9. Epidemics in sixteenth-cenutry America

10. Epidemics and the Thirty years’ war, 1618—1648

11. Plague in Italian cities, 1630s

12. Epidemics in China, 1640—1644

13. Plague in London, 1665

14. Smallpox in Iceland, 1707—1709

15. Plague in Marseilles, 1720—1722

16. Smallpox in Boston

17. Smallpox in eighteenth-century Europe

18. Plague in Moscow, 1771

19. Influenza pandemic, 1781—1782

20. Yellow fever in Hispaniola, 1793—1804

21. Yellow fever in Philadelphia, 1793

22. First cholera pandemic, 1817—1824

23. Consuption in the nineteenth century

24. Second cholera pandemic, 1839—1856

25. Third cholera pandemic, 1839—1856

26. “Fevers” and the Great famine in Ireland, 1846—1850

27. Typhoid fever in cities, 1850—1920

28. Yellow fever in New Orleans, 1853

29. Fourth cholera pandemic, 1863—1875

30. Carrion’s disease in Peru, 1870—1871

31. Smallpox in Europe, 1870—1875

32. Measles in Fiji, 1875

33. Fifth cholera pandemic, 1881—1896

34. Influenza pandemic, 1889—1890

35. Cholera epidemic in Hamburg, 1892

36. Third plague pandemic, 1894—?

37. Sixth cholera pandemic, 1899—1923

38. Sleeping sickness in East Central Africa, 1900—1905

39. Typhoid Mary’s “epidemics”

40. Cholera epidemic in Naples, 1910—1911

41. Ploliomyelitis in the United States, 1916

42. Influenza pandemic, 1918—1919

43. Lung cancer in the United States, mid-twentieth century

44. Poliomyelitis in the United States, 1945—1955

45. Seventh cholera pandemic, 1961—present

46. AIDS in the United States, 1980s

47. Contemporary AIDS pandemic

48. The Mad Cow crisis and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, 1985—present

49. Contemporary malaria

50. Contemporary tuberculosis

Epilogue

Some general books on epidemics

Glossary

Index

About the author

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