The story of man's fight against seven major dangerous diseases

Product Description: Diseases have had more influence on us than we realize. They have taken a major role in making us humans and probably determine the way we run our lives. They emerged with us from our ancestral home in Africa, to spread to the rest of the planet...read more

Product Description: This unique encyclopedia enables students to understand the myriad ways that the Columbian Exchange shaped the modern world, covering every major living organism from pathogens and plants to insects and mammals.• Represents the only encyclopedia to comprehensively treat the Columbian Exchange and document how this watershed event in history changed the world, not just in North America but worldwide• Provides full accounts of demographic and epidemiological trends and how the planet's current biodiversity resulted from the events of the Columbian Exchange• Includes primary documents that offer students material for analysis and promote critical thinking skills, thus supporting Common Core State Standards• Supplies both entry bibliographies and a selected, general bibliography to direct students to sources of additional informatio...read more

Product Description: Throughout history, humankind's working theories regarding the cause of infectious disease have shifted drastically, as cultures developed their philosophic, religious, and scientific beliefs. Plagues that were originally attributed to the wrath of the gods were later described as having nothing to do with the gods, though the cause continued to be a mystery...read more

Product Description: “Portrays epidemiologists as disease detectives who tirelessly hunt for clues and excel at deductive reasoning. Even Sherlock Holmes would be proud of this astute group of professionals.”—BooklistDespite advances in health care, infectious microbes continue to be a formidable adversary to scientists and doctors...read more

The average individual is far more likely to die in a car accident than from a communicable disease…yet we are still much more fearful of the epidemic. Even at our most level-headed, the thought of an epidemic can inspire terror. As Philip Alcabes persuasively argues in Dread, our anxieties about epidemics are created not so much by the germ or microbe in question—or the actual risks of contagion—but by the unknown, the undesirable, and the misunderstood.Alcabes examines epidemics through history to show how they reflect the particular social and cultural anxieties of their times. From Typhoid Mary to bioterrorism, as new outbreaks are unleashed or imagined, new fears surface, new enemies are born, and new behaviors emerge. Dread dissects the fascinating story of the imagined epidemic: the one that we think is happening, or might happen; the one that disguises moral judgments and political agendas, the one that ultimately expresses our deepest fears.

Product Description: Offers an introduction that reviews major types of infectious agents and modes of transmission and provides a historical overview of infectious diseases and our attempts to control epidemics. This book includes case studies of the United States, China, Africa, and India.

Discusses the science, the history and the future of epidemics. This book shows what epidemics are, how they begin and transmit, the various types they are and what they can cause. It shows the changing world of infectious disease and the possible infections lurking around the corner.

Product Description: With bird flu a very present threat, this is a timely and important look at the impact of quiet killers through the ages. In 1658 Oliver Cromwell, having brought a king to execution, and risen to power, died from malaria when he refused to take the Devil?s Bark, the quinine compound produced in a Catholic colony, which could have cured him...read more

Product Description: Barry Youngerman focuses on disease epidemics that spread across national and continental borders and take a heavy toll on human life. The text explores some of the brutal pandemics in world history, including the Black Death, smallpox and polio, AIDS, and avian or other flus.

Product Description: Professionals, students and all medical history buffs will be indebted to Socrates Litsios' new book Plague Legends: from the Miasmas of Hippocrates to the Microbes of Pasteur for providing an easy access to a treasure of information...read more

Product Description: This study highlights the relationship between medicine, literature and religion. Dr Jarcho describes what the Ancient Greeks and Romans wrote and may have thought about contagion and what caused the spread of disease. He then considers Moslem ideas on the subject, and follows these with writings by saints, theologians and controversialists in both religious and non-religious contexts...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Contagion - even today the word conjures up fear of disease and plague and has the power to terrify. The nine essays gathered here examine what pre-modern societies thought about the spread of disease and how it could be controlled: to what extent were concepts familiar to modern epidemiology present? What does the pre-modern terminology tell us about the conceptions of those times? How did medical thought relate to religious and social beliefs? The contributors reveal the complexity of ideas on these subjects, from antiquity through to the early modern world, from China to India, the Middle East, and Europe...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This is a history of the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of infectious diseases. The author, a physician who participated in many of the events he describes, offers fascinating insights into the medical discoveries that have led to the seemingly miraculous relief experienced by patients suffering from infection...read more

Product Description: Five Down and Glory, first published in 1958, is the authoritative record of America's top fighter pilots from the early 1900's through the Korean War. Beginning with a definition of the term “ace,” the book details the exploits of the Lafayette Escadrille in France, the Flying Tigers in China, the Eagle Squadron in England, pilots of the U...read more