Download or read book Beyond Germs written by Catherine M. Cameron and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America challenges the hypothesis that the massive depopulation of the New World was primarily caused by diseases brought by Europeans, which scholars used for decades to explain the decimation of the indigenous peoples of North America. Contributors expertly argue that blaming germs downplays the active role of Europeans in inciting wars, destroying livelihoods, and erasing identities.
Download or read book Beyond Germs written by Catherine M. Cameron and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no question that European colonization introduced smallpox, measles, and other infectious diseases to the Americas, causing considerable harm and death to indigenous peoples. But though these diseases were devastating, their impact has been widely exaggerated. Warfare, enslavement, land expropriation, removals, erasure of identity, and other factors undermined Native populations. These factors worked in a deadly cabal with germs to cause epidemics, exacerbate mortality, and curtail population recovery. Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America challenges the “virgin soil” hypothesis that was used for decades to explain the decimation of the indigenous people of North America. This hypothesis argues that the massive depopulation of the New World was caused primarily by diseases brought by European colonists that infected Native populations lacking immunity to foreign pathogens. In Beyond Germs, contributors expertly argue that blaming germs lets Europeans off the hook for the enormous number of Native American deaths that occurred after 1492. Archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians come together in this cutting-edge volume to report a wide variety of other factors in the decline in the indigenous population, including genocide, forced labor, and population dislocation. These factors led to what the editors describe in their introduction as “systemic structural violence” on the Native populations of North America. While we may never know the full extent of Native depopulation during the colonial period because the evidence available for indigenous communities is notoriously slim and problematic, what is certain is that a generation of scholars has significantly overemphasized disease as the cause of depopulation and has downplayed the active role of Europeans in inciting wars, destroying livelihoods, and erasing identities.
Download or read book Silent Travelers written by Alan M. Kraut and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1995-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the American tradition of suspicion of the unassimilated, from the cholera outbreak of the 1830s through the great waves of immigration that began in the 1890s, to the recent past, when the erroneous association of Haitians with the AIDS virus brought widespread panic and discrimination. Kraut (history, American U.) found that new immigrant populations--made up of impoverished laborers living in urban America's least sanitary conditions--have been victims of illness rather than its progenitors, yet the medical establishment has often blamed epidemics on immigrants' traditions, ethnic habits, or genetic heritage. Originally published in hardcover by Basic Books in 1994. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Good Germs Bad Germs written by Jessica Snyder Sachs and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making Peace with Microbes Public sanitation and antibiotic drugs have brought about historic increases in the human life span; they have also unintentionally produced new health crises by disrupting the intimate, age-old balance between humans and the microorganisms that inhabit our bodies and our environment. As a result, antibiotic resistance now ranks among the gravest medical problems of modern times. Good Germs, Bad Germs addresses not only this issue but also what has become known as the "hygiene hypothesis"— an argument that links the over-sanitation of modern life to now-epidemic increases in immune and other disorders. In telling the story of what went terribly wrong in our war on germs, Jessica Snyder Sachs explores our emerging understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the human body and its resident microbes—which outnumber its human cells by a factor of nine to one! The book also offers a hopeful look into a future in which antibiotics will be designed and used more wisely, and beyond that, to a day when we may replace antibacterial drugs and cleansers with bacterial ones—each custom-designed for maximum health benefits.
Download or read book Deadliest Enemy written by Michael T. Osterholm and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infectious disease has the terrifying power to disrupt everyday life on a global scale, overwhelming public and private resources and bringing trade and transportation to a halt. In today's world, it's easier than ever to move people, animals, and materials around the planet, but the same advances that make modern infrastructure so efficient have made epidemics and even pandemics nearly inevitable. So what can -- and must -- we do in order to protect ourselves? Drawing on the latest medical science, case studies, and policy research, Deadliest enemy explores the resources and programs we need to develop if we are to keep ourselves safe from infectious disease.--
Download or read book The Secret Life of Germs written by Philip M. Tierno and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-01-06 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of germs, discussing how germs have been viewed and treated throughout time and explains why germs now pose an even greater risk to mankind than ever before.
Download or read book Beyond Anthrax written by Larry I. Lutwick and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-12-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biological warfare has, unfortunately, in the post 9/11 world become a significant topic of discussion in both the medical and lay presses. In the wake of the biological "letter bombs" containing anthrax spores, the possibility of biologic and/or toxic attacks on civilians in any part of the world became no longer a possibility. It is now part of common discussion and consciousness. This book presents the history of the topics and clinically relevant discussions on those high risk (Category A) diseases beyond anthrax as well as a number of infections and toxins at the Category B level. Importantly, in addition, the text includes sections on Public Health Infrastructure, Public Health Law, Surveillance, Mental Health Management and Media Role all of which relate to epidemics of any sort, not just intentional biological events. Beyond Anthrax: The Weaponization of Infectious Diseases is a product that should serve as a reference point for clinicians, epidemiologists and public health personnel to understand in practical detail many of the aspects of weapons of biowarfare as well as the appropriate responses to them.
Download or read book Beyond the Germ Theory written by Jeanne Logue and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of Dr. Cooper Curtice (1856–1939) played a major role in saving America's livestock industry in the years around the turn of the century. But as the new biography Beyond the Germ Theory shows, Curtice's career exemplifies not only the development of veterinary medicine in the U.S. but also how government agencies and professional jealousies affect the advancement of science."Curtis did not receive the timely credit and recognition that was due him," author Jeanne N. Logue observes. His greatest achievement was helping to eradicate ticks and the Texas fever they caused in cattle. But as he conducted his research, proposed the vector theory of disease transmission, and fought for a tick eradication program, his scientific peers often scorned his new ideas, only to appropriate them later. Curtice graduated from Cornell in 1881, and after a short stint in medical school at the University of Michigan he transferred to the Columbia Veterinary College in New York City. In 1886 he was invited to join the new Bureau of Animal Industry in Washington, D.C. While there, bureaucratic squabbling, questionable ethics in the organization, and professional backbiting buffeted his research. After a few years he left, vowing to continue his mission to eradicate ticks and stop the spread of tuberculosis by milk from diseased cattle. In his home state of New York, Curtice was the first to start testing cattle for tuberculosis, and his research contributed to the control of parasites in sheep. For his efforts, though, he sometimes received less than thanks. One cattleman wrote him a letter saying, "You are a big ass and don't know nothing about cattle . . . feed the cattle sulpher [sic] and you will have them well in a week." Other times, Curtice faced armed men or other threats to his safety. On the professional side of the insults, when his former supervisor Theobald Smith published an acclaimed paper on Texas fever, he did so without even mentioning Curtice's name. Eventually, Curtice returned to government service and continued his work in Central America. Not until 1933 did he receive national recognition for his work, in the form of a medallion from the American Veterinary Medical Association. Five years after his death in 1939, the cattle fever tick that had occupied much of Curtice's attention was declared eradicated in the U.S. except for a narrow quarantine zone along the Texas-Mexico border.
Download or read book Why Nations Fail written by Daron Acemoglu and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity” “A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.”—The New York Times FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them: • Will China’s economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West? • Are America’s best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority? “This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.”—BusinessWeek
Download or read book Cherokee Medicine Colonial Germs written by Paul Kelton and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2015-04-08 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How smallpox, or Variola, caused widespread devastation during the European colonization of the Americas is a well-known story. But as historian Paul Kelton informs us, that’s precisely what it is: a convenient story. In Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs Kelton challenges the “virgin soil thesis,” or the widely held belief that Natives’ lack of immunities and their inept healers were responsible for their downfall. Eschewing the metaphors and hyperbole routinely associated with the impact of smallpox, he firmly shifts the focus to the root cause of indigenous suffering and depopulation—colonialism writ large; not disease. Kelton’s account begins with the long, false dawn between 1518 and the mid-seventeenth century, when sporadic encounters with Europeans did little to bring Cherokees into the wider circulation of guns, goods, and germs that had begun to transform Native worlds. By the 1690s English-inspired slave raids had triggered a massive smallpox epidemic that struck the Cherokees for the first time. Through the eighteenth century, Cherokees repeatedly responded to real and threatened epidemics—and they did so effectively by drawing on their own medicine. Yet they also faced terribly destructive physical violence from the British during the Anglo-Cherokee War (1759–1761) and from American militias during the Revolutionary War. Having suffered much more from the scourge of war than from smallpox, the Cherokee population rebounded during the nineteenth century and, without abandoning Native medical practices and beliefs, Cherokees took part in the nascent global effort to eradicate Variola by embracing vaccination. A far more complex and nuanced history of Variola among American Indians emerges from these pages, one that privileges the lived experiences of the Cherokees over the story of their supposedly ill-equipped immune systems and counterproductive responses. Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs shows us how Europeans and their American descendants have obscured the past with the stories they left behind, and how these stories have perpetuated a simplistic understanding of colonialism.
Download or read book Transcendence written by Gaia Vince and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, a winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books shows how four tools enabled has us humans to control the destiny of our species "A wondrous, visionary work." --Tim Flannery, scientist and author of the bestselling The Weather Makers What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Readers of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution -- a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones -- caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time. She explains how, through four key elements -- fire, language, beauty, and time -- our species diverged from the evolutionary path of all other animals, unleashing a compounding process that launched us into the Space Age and beyond. Provocative and poetic, Transcendence shows how a primate took dominion over nature and turned itself into something marvelous.
Download or read book Germs written by Judith Miller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “engrossing, well-documented, and highly readable” (San Francisco Chronicle) New York Times bestseller, three veteran reporters draw on top sources inside and outside the U.S. government to reveal Washington's secret strategies for combating germ warfare and the deadly threat of biological and chemical weapons. Today Americans have begun to grapple with two difficult truths: that there is no terrorist threat more horrifying—and less understood—than germ warfare, and that it would take very little to mount a devastating attack on American soil. Featuring an inside look at how germ warfare has been waged throughout history and what form its future might take (and in whose hands), Germs reads like a gripping detective story told by fascinating key figures: American and Soviet medical specialists who once made germ weapons but now fight their spread, FBI agents who track Islamic radicals, the Iraqis who built Saddam Hussein's secret arsenal, spies who travel the world collecting lethal microbes, and scientists who see ominous developments on the horizon. With clear scientific explanations and harrowing insights, Germs is a vivid, masterfully written—and timely—work of investigative journalism.
Download or read book The Future of Violence Robots and Germs Hackers and Drones written by Benjamin Wittes and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The terrifying new role of technology in a world at war
Download or read book Beyond the Blue Horizon written by Brian Fagan and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We know the tales of Columbus and Captain Cook, yet much earlier mariners made equally bold and world-changing voyages. In Beyond the Blue Horizon, archaeologist and historian Brian Fagan tackles his richest topic yet: the enduring quest to master the oceans, the planet's most mysterious terrain. From the moment when ancient Polynesians first dared to sail beyond the horizon, Fagan vividly explains how our mastery of the oceans changed the course of human history. What drove humans to risk their lives on open water? How did early sailors unlock the secrets of winds, tides, and the stars they steered by? What were the earliest ocean crossings like? With compelling detail, Fagan reveals how seafaring evolved so that the forbidding realms of the sea gods were transformed from barriers into a nexus of commerce and cultural exchange. From bamboo rafts in the Java Sea to triremes in the Aegean, from Norse longboats in the North Atlantic to sealskin kayaks in Alaska, Fagan crafts a captivating narrative of humanity's urge to challenge the unknown and seek out distant shores.
Download or read book Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute Or Philosophical Society of Great Britain written by Victoria Institute (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each volume includes list of members, and "objects of the institute" (except v. 31, which has no list of members). Beginning with v. 12, a list of the papers contained in preceding volumes is issued regularly with each volume.
Download or read book Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute Or Philosophical Society of Great Britain written by and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth Century Struggle against Filth and Germs written by David S. Barnes and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-06-06 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scientific and social history surrounding the 1880 incident of a foul odor in Paris and the development of public health culture that followed. Late in the summer of 1880, a wave of odors enveloped large portions of Paris. As the stench lingered, outraged residents feared that the foul air would breed an epidemic. Fifteen years later—when the City of Light was in the grips of another Great Stink—the public conversation about health and disease had changed dramatically. Parisians held their noses and protested, but this time few feared that the odors would spread disease. Historian David S. Barnes examines the birth of a new microbe-centered science of public health during the 1880s and 1890s, when the germ theory of disease burst into public consciousness. Tracing a series of developments in French science, medicine, politics, and culture, Barnes reveals how the science and practice of public health changed during the heyday of the Bacteriological Revolution. Despite its many innovations, however, the new science of germs did not entirely sweep away the older “sanitarian” view of public health. The longstanding conviction that disease could be traced to filthy people, places, and substances remained strong, even as it was translated into the language of bacteriology. Ultimately, the attitudes of physicians and the French public were shaped by political struggles between republicans and the clergy, by aggressive efforts to educate and “civilize” the peasantry, and by long-term shifts in the public’s ability to tolerate the odor of bodily substances. “A well-developed study in medically related social history, it tells an intriguing tale and prompts us to ask how our own cultural contexts affect our views and actions regarding environmental and infectious scourges here and now.” —New England Journal of Medicine “Both a captivating story and a sophisticated historical study. Kudos to Barnes for this valuable and insightful book that both physicians and historians will enjoy.” —Journal of the American Medical Association
