Download or read book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress written by Thomas J. Bollyky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the news about the global decline of infectious diseases is not all good. Plagues and parasites have played a central role in world affairs, shaping the evolution of the modern state, the growth of cities, and the disparate fortunes of national economies. This book tells that story, but it is not about the resurgence of pestilence. It is the story of its decline. For the first time in recorded history, virus, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death or disability in any region of the world. People are living longer, and fewer mothers are giving birth to many children in the hopes that some might survive. And yet, the news is not all good. Recent reductions in infectious disease have not been accompanied by the same improvements in income, job opportunities, and governance that occurred with these changes in wealthier countries decades ago. There have also been unintended consequences. In this book, Thomas Bollyky explores the paradox in our fight against infectious disease: the world is getting healthier in ways that should make us worry. Bollyky interweaves a grand historical narrative about the rise and fall of plagues in human societies with contemporary case studies of the consequences. Bollyky visits Dhaka—one of the most densely populated places on the planet—to show how low-cost health tools helped enable the phenomenon of poor world megacities. He visits China and Kenya to illustrate how dramatic declines in plagues have affected national economies. Bollyky traces the role of infectious disease in the migrations from Ireland before the potato famine and to Europe from Africa and elsewhere today. Historic health achievements are remaking a world that is both worrisome and full of opportunities. Whether the peril or promise of that progress prevails, Bollyky explains, depends on what we do next. A Council on Foreign Relations Book

Download or read book Plague s Progress written by Arno Karlen and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Death, the Great Plague, leprosy, smallpox: the very names now have a historical - almost a mythological - ring. With our space-age hospitals and wonder drugs, surely we've consigned pestilence to the past? Even AIDS hasn't succeeded in persuading us otherwise . . .In this shocking, scintillating book, biohistorian Arno Karlen questions this complacent conspiracy, tracing the continuities of contagion from ancient times to the present day. An epic of epidemic, the story is, he says, anything but over: indeed we may well be standing on the brink of disaster.

Download or read book Plagues upon the Earth written by Kyle Harper and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping germ’s-eye view of history from human origins to global pandemics Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality. He also tells the story of humanity’s escape from infectious disease—a triumph that makes life as we know it possible, yet destabilizes the environment and fosters new diseases. Panoramic in scope, Plagues upon the Earth traces the role of disease in the transition to farming, the spread of cities, the advance of transportation, and the stupendous increase in human population. Harper offers a new interpretation of humanity’s path to control over infectious disease—one where rising evolutionary threats constantly push back against human progress, and where the devastating effects of modernization contribute to the great divergence between societies. The book reminds us that human health is globally interdependent—and inseparable from the well-being of the planet itself. Putting the COVID-19 pandemic in perspective, Plagues upon the Earth tells the story of how we got here as a species, and it may help us decide where we want to go.

Download or read book Pioneer Science and the Great Plagues written by Norman F. Cheville and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pioneer Science and the Great Plagues covers the century when infectious plagues—anthrax, tuberculosis, tetanus, plague, smallpox, and polio—were conquered, and details the important role that veterinary scientists played. The narrative is driven by astonishing events that centered on animal disease: the influenza pandemic of 1872, discovery of the causes of anthrax and tuberculosis in the 1880s, conquest of Texas cattle fever and then yellow fever, German anthrax attacks on the United States during World War I, the tuberculin war of 1931, Japanese biological warfare in the 1940s, and today’s bioterror dangers. Veterinary science in the rural Midwest arose from agriculture, but in urban Philadelphia it came from medicine; similar differences occurred in Canada between Toronto and Montreal. As land-grant colleges were established after the American Civil War, individual states followed divergent pathways in supporting veterinary science. Some employed a trade school curriculum that taught agriculturalists to empirically treat animal diseases and others emphasized a curriculum tied to science. This pattern continued for a century, but today some institutions have moved back to the trade school philosophy. Avoiding lessons of the 1910 Flexner Report on medical education reform, university-associated veterinary schools are being approved that do not have control of their own veterinary hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, and research institutes—components that are critical for training students in science. Underlying this change were twin idiosyncrasies of culture—disbelief in science and distrust of government—that spawned scientology, creationism, anti-vaccination movements, and other anti-science scams. As new infectious plagues continue to arise, Pioneer Science and the Great Plagues details the strategies we learned defeating plagues from 1860 to 1960—and the essential role veterinary science played. To defeat the plagues of today it is essential we avoid the digital cocoon of disbelief in science and cultural stasis now threatening progress.

Download or read book The Plague Cycle written by Charles Kenny and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid, sweeping, and “fact-filled” (Booklist, starred review) history of mankind’s battles with infectious disease that “contextualizes the COVID-19 pandemic” (Publishers Weekly)—for readers of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and John Barry’s The Great Influenza. For four thousand years, the size and vitality of cities, economies, and empires were heavily determined by infection. Striking humanity in waves, the cycle of plagues set the tempo of civilizational growth and decline, since common response to the threat was exclusion—quarantining the sick or keeping them out. But the unprecedented hygiene and medical revolutions of the past two centuries have allowed humanity to free itself from the hold of epidemic cycles—resulting in an urbanized, globalized, and unimaginably wealthy world. However, our development has lately become precarious. Climate and population fluctuations and factors such as global trade have left us more vulnerable than ever to newly emerging plagues. Greater global cooperation toward sustainable health is urgently required—such as the international efforts to manufacture and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine—with millions of lives and trillions of dollars at stake. “A timely, lucid look at the role of pandemics in history” (Kirkus Reviews), The Plague Cycle reveals the relationship between civilization, globalization, prosperity, and infectious disease over the past five millennia. It harnesses history, economics, and public health, and charts humanity’s remarkable progress, providing a fascinating and astute look at the cyclical nature of infectious disease.

Download or read book The Plague Cycle written by Charles Kenny and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of mankind's battles against infectious diseases looks at how epidemics shaped empires and economies and how medical revolutions freed us from these cycles until new threats arose caused by changes in global trade and climate.

Download or read book The Bubonic Plague Its Origin Progress and Means of Prevention written by Pennsylvania. Department of Health and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Plagues written by Jonathan L. Heeney and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-09 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plagues have inflicted misery and suffering throughout history. They can be traced through generations in our genes, with echoes in religion and literature. Featuring essays arising from the 2014 Darwin College Lectures, this book examines the spectrum of tragic consequences of different types of plagues, from infectious diseases to over-population and computer viruses. The essays analyse the impact that plagues have had on humanity and animals, and their threat to the very survival of the world as we know it. On the theme of plagues, each essay takes a unique perspective, ranging from the impact of plagues on history, medicine, the evolution of species, and biblical metaphors, to their impact on national economies, and even our highly connected digital lifestyles. This engaging and timely collection challenges our understanding of plagues, and asks if plagues are the manifestation of nature's checks and balances in light of human population growth and our impact on climate change.

Download or read book The Plague Year written by Lawrence Wright and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to surprise us about even those episodes we … thought we knew well … [With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” —The New York Times Book Review From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time . . . inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism . . . into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina . . . into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs . . . into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues . . . inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function—with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential. In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.

Download or read book A Treatise on Plague written by W. J. Simpson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-31 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive 1905 study of bubonic plague, charting its 3000-year history, and including data on diagnosis, treatment and prevention.

Download or read book From Egypt to Canaan The progress of man from the unregenerate to the regenerate state written by Jonathan Bayley and published by . This book was released on 1869 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Va era Bo English written by CET-LE TEAM and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The student workbooks are available in print and the teacher guides as downloadable PDFs, in Hebrew and English.

Download or read book An Essay on the Plague written by William Falconer and published by . This book was released on 1801 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Plagues in World History written by John Aberth and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plagues in World History provides a concise, comparative world history of catastrophic infectious diseases, including plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, influenza, and AIDS. Geographically, these diseases have spread across the entire globe; temporally, they stretch from the sixth century to the present. John Aberth considers not only the varied impact that disease has had upon human history but also the many ways in which people have been able to influence diseases simply through their cultural attitudes toward them. The author argues that the ability of humans to alter disease, even without the modern wonders of antibiotic drugs and other medical treatments, is an even more crucial lesson to learn now that AIDS, swine flu, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, and other seemingly incurable illnesses have raged worldwide. Aberth's comparative analysis of how different societies have responded in the past to disease illuminates what cultural approaches have been and may continue to be most effective in combating the plagues of today.

Download or read book Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World written by Nükhet Varlik and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies, and travelers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire's growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.

Download or read book Plague Ports written by Myron Echenberg and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the global effects of the bubonic plague, and what we can learn from this earlier pandemic A century ago, the third bubonic plague swept the globe, taking more than 15 million lives. Plague Ports tells the story of ten cities on five continents that were ravaged by the epidemic in its initial years: Hong Kong and Bombay, the Asian emporiums of the British Empire where the epidemic first surfaced; Sydney, Honolulu and San Francisco, three “pearls” of the Pacific; Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro in South America; Alexandria and Cape Town in Africa; and Oporto in Europe. Myron Echenberg examines plague's impact in each of these cities, on the politicians, the medical and public health authorities, and especially on the citizenry, many of whom were recent migrants crammed into grim living spaces. He looks at how different cultures sought to cope with the challenge of deadly epidemic disease, and explains the political, racial, and medical ineptitudes and ignorance that allowed the plague to flourish. The forces of globalization and industrialization, Echenberg argues, had so increased the transmission of microorganisms that infectious disease pandemics were likely, if not inevitable. This fascinating, expansive history, enlivened by harrowing photographs and maps of each city, sheds light on urbanism and modernity at the turn of the century, as well as on glaring public health inequalities. With the recent outbreak of COVID-19, and ongoing fears of bioterrorism, Plague Ports offers a necessary and timely historical lesson.

Download or read book Plagues Apocalypses and Bug Eyed Monsters written by Heather Urbanski and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2007-01-23 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speculative fiction--both science fiction and fantasy--reflects, among other things, the fears of the culture that created it, contributing (perhaps unconsciously) to our efforts to prevent our fears from coming true. While the names and media change over time, the themes of speculative fiction have a long history. Nineteenth century works such as Frankenstein and The Invisible Man contain many of the same messages as the more modern tales of Terminator, Jurassic Park and even Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, although almost a century separates their creation. This critical study discusses the ways in which speculative fiction reflects societal fears and analyzes how such cautionary tales contribute to society's efforts to avoid the realization of these fears. Beginning with a discussion of the nature of speculative fiction, it takes a look at the characteristics of the cautionary tale. The core of the book, however, is the concept of the "Nightmares Model," which examines and categorizes the repetition of specific themes within the genre. The dangers of science and technology, the perils of power, and the threat of the unknown are discussed as recurrent themes within a variety of works in prose, film and television. Works analyzed range from Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Blair Witch Project. Sources include the author's own observations as a member of the genre's fandom, a variety of published commentaries and the perspectives of contemporary professionals gained through personal interviews and panel discussions.