The best books on how diseases shape society and can change the course of history
By Carol R. Byerly
Who am I?
Carol R. Byerly is a historian specializing in the history of military medicine. She has taught American history and the history of medicine history at the University of Colorado, Boulder, was a contract historian for the U.S. Army Office of the Surgeon General, Office of History, and has also worked for the U.S. Congress and the American Red Cross. Byerly’s publications include Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I and Good Tuberculosis Men: The Army Medical Department’s Struggle with Tuberculosis. She is currently working on a biography of Army medical officer William C. Gorgas, (1854-1920), whose public health measures, including clearing yellow fever from Panama, enabled the United States to construct the canal across the Isthmus.
I wrote...
Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army During World War I
By
Carol R. Byerly
What is my book about?
The startling impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the American army, its medical officers, and their profession, a story which has long been silenced. The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people in one year than the Great War killed in four, sickening at least one-quarter of the world's population. In Fever of War, Carol R. Byerly uncovers medical officers' memoirs and diaries, official reports, scientific articles, and other original sources, to tell a grave tale about the limits of modern medicine and warfare.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82
By
Elizabeth A. Fenn
Why this book?
This is another book on disease and war and shows how smallpox was a lethal actor in the American Revolution. Smallpox gave the largely immune British forces an advantage over Americans, (white, Black, and Indian), who had never been exposed to the virus, which prompted General George Washington to order the inoculation of his troops. This was the first government immunization effort in American history. The book then follows the virus across the continent as it traveled with foreign traders and native peoples, devastating tribal populations from East to West.
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Plagues and Peoples - Central Role Infectious Disease Plays in World History
By
William H. McNeill
Why this book?
This is a classic and the first book I ever read showing me how disease has shaped world history. Over millennia, pathogens have evolved with human populations, adjusting to changed landscapes and the rise modern agriculture and great urban centers. They take advantage of human travel and commerce, and flourish in social disruptions such as war, famine, and mass migration. McNeill describes how diseases helped determine winners and losers in history and also have inspired scientific investigation which has brought some pathogens under control.
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Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History
By
Charles E. Rosenberg,
Janet Golden
Why this book?
One of the editors of this volume is a pioneer in the history of medicine, Charles Rosenberg, who theorizes that diseases are powerful “actors” in society. The book uses fourteen case studies to demonstrate how diseases can “frame” people in various ways, defining their lives with pain, disability, or stigma. Diseases also give rise to various institutions such as sanitariums, research laboratories and stimulate the development of medical specialties. As our scientific and social understanding of individual diseases changes over time, how a society responds to or “frames” those diseases changes as well.
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Epidemics: The Impact of Germs and Their Power over Humanity
By
Joshua Loomis
Why this book?
This is a sweeping study of disease in human history written by a scientist who describes both the biological and historical trajectory of ten infectious diseases that have afflicted human society, from bubonic plague to HIV/Aids. While science and medicine continue to find ways to control individual diseases, new infections and parasites continue to emerge to sicken, disable and kill. Loomis concludes with a thoughtful discussion about the future of epidemic disease as we continue to alter our global environment.
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Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914
By
J. R. McNeill
Why this book?
McNeill, William McNeill’s son, examines the intersection of disease, ecology, race, and international politics to show how infectious disease shaped the fortunes of colonial empires in the Caribbean. In the wake of the encounter between Europeans and the New World which destroyed up to 90 percent of the Amerindian population, European empires restructured the region into a colonial economy of sugar and slavery. Mosquitos bearing malaria and yellow fever flourished in this environment and McNeill shows how anyone seeking power in the region had to reckon with both them and disease.
