Microbes at War: From the Dark Ages to Modern Times: 0000 - Softcover

Renaud, Francois; Freney, Jean

9782747215473: Microbes at War: From the Dark Ages to Modern Times: 0000

Softcover

ISBN 10: 2747215474 ISBN 13: 9782747215473

Publisher: ESKA Publishing, 2012

this book illustrates how infectious diseases have influenced the outcome of numerous historical events, especially political and military conflicts. Even in ancient times, people learned to live in the presence of the so-Called "miasmas" and in fact used them to scare the enemy. A particularly illustrative example is that of the siege of Syracuse in 416 BC, during which the Spartans cornered the Athenians into an area where swamp fever (malaria) was rampant and thus wiped them out. Similarly, in the Dark Ages, human or animal cadavers used to be thrown into wells to contaminate the water and make it unfit for consumption. One of the strategies followed in the Middle Ages consisted of catapulting corpses of men who had died of plague into the enemy camp in order to spread the deadly infection. During the eighteenth century conflicts in North America, the British are known to have offered clothing contaminated with smallpox virus to the native Indians who were friendly with the French. Naturally occurring infections too have often upset the sequence of historical events, such as the epidemic of syphilis during the siege of Naples by King Charles VIII of France, or the English sweating sickness at the time of Lutheran Reformation. The Great Famine that was rife in Ireland in the nineteenth century was a result of a massive destruction of potato crops due to a fungal infection, and it eventually brought to power the first Catholic President of the United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The epidemic of influenza known as "Spanish flu" significantly altered the course of World War I. At the turn of the century we see a scientific approach to the use of biological agents for military purposes with the aim of developing weapons of mass destruction, as depicted by the Japanese experiment in Manchuria during World War II. More recently, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, letter bombs carrying anthrax spores appeared, signaling the emergence of a particularly worrying phenomenon: bioterrorism.

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About the Author:

Jean Freney, is a University Professor (at UMR 5557 and CNRS Microbial Ecology � University Claude Bernard, Lyon 1) and teaches Microbiology at the Institute of Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences in Lyon (France). He is also a hospital staff member at the Eastern Biological Center in Lyon (France).
Francois Renaud, is a University Professor (at UMR and CNRS 5510 Mateis, University Claude Bernard, Lyon 1) and teaches Microbiology in the Bioengineering Department at the Academic Institute of Technology in Lyon (France).

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