Author: Ole Jørgen Benedictow Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1527583058 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 761
Book Description
Historical studies of plague are predominantly related to individual local epidemics, often associated with the Black Death. However, this unique book provides a complete presentation of the entire Second Plague Pandemic in Norway, from the Black Death to the last outbreaks of plague in 1654. It begins with a succinct presentation of the history of plague and its basic clinical and epidemiological features, while also drawing upon new scholarship and research. It confirms the great genetic stability of the plague contagion, and shows that the outbreaks and spread of plague can be studied in interaction with two historical societies of two historical periods, the late medieval society and the early modern society. The changes and differences in epidemiology and dynamics of plague between the two halves of the pandemic are gateways to understanding how plague epidemics are transmitted, disseminated and evolve. The book’s long-term perspective allows it to study plague’s epidemiology and to identify consistent long-term features.
Author: Ruth Rogaski Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226818802 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 478
Book Description
Making sense of nature in one of the world’s most contested borderlands. According to Chinese government reports, hundreds of plague-infected rodents fell from the skies over Gannan county on an April night in 1952. Chinese scientists determined that these flying voles were not native to the region, but were vectors of germ warfare, dispatched over the border by agents of imperialism. Mastery of biology had become a way to claim political mastery over a remote frontier. Beginning with this bizarre incident from the Korean War, Knowing Manchuria places the creation of knowledge about nature at the center of our understanding of a little-known but historically important Asian landscape. At the intersection of China, Russia, Korea, and Mongolia, Manchuria is known as a site of war and environmental extremes, where projects of political control intersected with projects designed to make sense of Manchuria’s multiple environments. Covering more than 500,000 square miles, Manchuria’s landscapes include temperate rainforests, deserts, prairies, cultivated plains, wetlands, and Siberian taiga. With analysis spanning the seventeenth century to the present day, Ruth Rogaski reveals how an array of historical actors—Chinese poets, Manchu shamans, Russian botanists, Korean mathematicians, Japanese bacteriologists, American paleontologists, and indigenous hunters—made sense of the Manchurian frontier. She uncovers how natural knowledge, and thus the nature of Manchuria itself, changed over time, from a sacred “land where the dragon arose” to a global epicenter of contagious disease; from a tragic “wasteland” to an abundant granary that nurtured the hope of a nation.
Author: Nicole Elizabeth Barnes Publisher: University of California Press ISBN: 0520300467 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. When China’s War of Resistance against Japan began in July 1937, it sparked an immediate health crisis throughout China. In the end, China not only survived the war but emerged from the trauma with a more cohesive population. Intimate Communities argues that women who worked as military and civilian nurses, doctors, and midwives during this turbulent period built the national community, one relationship at a time. In a country with a majority illiterate, agricultural population that could not relate to urban elites’ conceptualization of nationalism, these women used their work of healing to create emotional bonds with soldiers and civilians from across the country. These bonds transcended the divides of social class, region, gender, and language.
Author: Mark Honigsbaum Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 1787382648 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 356
Book Description
Like sharks, epidemic diseases always lurk just beneath the surface. This fast-paced history of their effect on mankind prompts questions about the limits of scientific knowledge, the dangers of medical hubris, and how we should prepare as epidemics become ever more frequent. Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet, despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu and the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 'parrot fever' pandemic and the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last 100 years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms. Like man-eating sharks, predatory pathogens are always present in nature, waiting to strike; when one is seemingly vanquished, others appear in its place. These pandemics remind us of the limits of scientific knowledge, as well as the role that human behaviour and technologies play in the emergence and spread of microbial diseases.
Author: Ole Jørgen Benedictow
Author: 
Author: Library of Congress. Reference Department
Author: Ruth Rogaski
Author: 
Author: British Museum. Department of Printed Books
Author: British Museum. Dept. of Printed Books
Author: Nicole Elizabeth Barnes
Author: Mark Honigsbaum
Author: British Library