Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence (Past and Present Publications). This item is unavailable.Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence (Past and Present Publications)

This volume examines the way in which epidemics have influenced ideas from the ancient world to AIDS today.

'Epidemics and Ideas shows how epidemics evoke a series of recognisable reactions and responses from society beyond the specifics of pathogen, place or time. It is a very modern book, which brings successfully together history, anthropology, sociology and other so-called social sciences with medicine, or at least with public health. It goes far beyond the earlier appreciation of the relationship between human society and diseases ... [and] brings a vast specialised literature about past epidemics and the response of society to them within reach of the general reader'. New Scientist

'... a remarkable cohesive and delightfully variegated book that brings medical and biological history into firm and fruitful contact with intellectual and social history ... This is, in short, a splendid book – subtle, informed, sophisticated and coherent. It shows how successfully the social history of epidemics has come of age in recent years'. The Journal of Social History