My Library

LEADER 00000cam a2200289 a 4500 
001    u45909 
003    SIRSI 
008    180904s2016    xxua     b    001 0 eng d 
020    9780199340071 
020    9780199340088 (ebook epdf) 
020    9780199340095 (ebook epub) 
020    9780190625214 (online resource) 
050 00 RA649 |bM373 2016 
100 1  McMillen, Christian W.,|d1969 
245 10 Pandemics :|ba very short introduction /|cChristian W. 
       McMillen. 
260    New York, NY :|bOxford University Press,|c2016 
300    153 p: |bills, map ;|c18 cm. 
490    Very short introductions 
504    Includes bibliographical references and index. 
520    "The 2014 Ebola epidemic demonstrated the power of 
       pandemics and their ability not only to destroy lives 
       locally but also to capture the imagination and terrify 
       the world. Christian W. McMillen provides a concise yet 
       comprehensive account of pandemics throughout human 
       history, illustrating how pandemic disease has shaped 
       history and, at the same time, social behavior has 
       influenced pandemic disease. Extremely interesting from a 
       medical standpoint, the study of pandemics also provides 
       unexpected, broader insights into culture and politics. 
       This Very Short Introduction describes history's major 
       pandemics - plague, tuberculosis, malaria, smallpox, 
       cholera, influenza, and HIV/AIDS - highlighting how each 
       disease's biological characteristics affected its pandemic
       development. McMillen discusses state responses to 
       pandemics, such as quarantine, isolation, travel 
       restrictions, and other forms of social control, and pays 
       special attention to the rise of public health and the 
       explosion of medical research in the wake of pandemics, 
       especially as the germ theory of disease emerged in the 
       late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, 
       medicine is able to control all of these diseases, yet 
       some of them are still devastating in much of the 
       developing world. By assessing the relationship between 
       poverty and disease and the geography of epidemics, 
       McMillen offers an outspoken and thought-provoking point 
       of view on the necessity for global governments to learn 
       from past experiences and proactively cooperate to prevent
       any future epidemic'' 
520    "The book provides a concise yet comprehensive account of 
       pandemics throughout human history, including plague, 
       tubercolosis, smallpox, malaria, cholera, and HIV. He 
       illustrates the ways in which pandemic disease has shaped 
       history and how human history has shaped pandemic disease.
       Pandemics are both interesting from a medical standpoint 
       and provide insight into the culture and politics of their
       time" 
650  0 Epidemics |xHistory