"One of the best portrayals of life in Europe and the Islamic world during the medieval Great Plague. . . . Watts offers solid, stunning examples of Western idiocy that created superhighways for once-obscure microbes, leading to horrendous epidemics. . . . Aperspective that Western, particularly Caucasian, policy-makers would do well to comprehend."Laurie Garrett, Foreign Affairs
"Fascinating . . . [Watts] exposes to daylight the dire effect of the elites' often misinformed conception of these diseases, and how they, the elites, manipulated epidemiological crises to their advantage."Alfred Crosby, Washington Post
This book is a major and wide-ranging study of the great epidemic scourges of humanityplague, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, cholera, and yellow fever/malariaover the last six centuries. It is also much more. Sheldon Wattsapplies a wholly original perspective to the study of global disease, exploring the connections between the movement of epidemics and the manifestations of imperial power in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and in European homelands. He argues that not only did Western medicine fail to cure the diseases that its own expansion engendered, but that imperial medicine was in fact an agent and tool of empire.
Watts examines the relationship between the pre-modern and modern medical profession and such epidemic disasters as the plague in western Europe and the Middle East; leprosy in the medieval West and in the nineteenth-century tropical world; the spread of smallpox to the New World in the age of exploration; syphilis and nonsexual diseases in Europes connection with Asia; cholera in India during British rule; and malaria in the Atlantic Basin during the eras of slavery and Social Darwinism. This book will become the standard account of the way diseasesarising through chance, through reckless environmental change engineered by man, or through a combination of eachwere interpreted in Western Europe and in the colonized world, and offers an interesting historical perspective for a world dealing with the spread of COVID-19.

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zlibzh/no-category/ssreader/ssreader_30611946.pdf

Sheldon J. Watts

Watts, Sheldon

Watts, S. J.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Brandywine River Museum

Mariners' Museum, The

First paperback edition, New Haven, Conn, 1999

Place of publication not identified, 1999

United States, United States of America

New Ed edition, November 10, 1999

1, PS, 1999

producers:
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This book is a major and wide-ranging study of the great epidemic scourges of humanity-plague, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, cholera, and yellow fever/malaria-over the last six centuries. It will become the standard account of the way diseases arising through chance, through reckless environmental change engineered by man, or through a combination of each were interpreted in Western Europe and in the colonized world.
<p>"This trenchant book provides a salutary antidote to world health complacency, past and present."-Roy Porter, The Times (London)</p>
<p>"Watts' . . . mastery of six centuries of Western-influenced infectious disease and sanitation history is impressive. He also writes with authority about the pre-modern and modern medical profession."-Claire Panosian, Los Angeles Times Book Review</p>
<p>"Watts offers solid, stunning examples of Western idiocy that created superhighways for once-obscure microbes, leading to horrendous epidemics. . . . His is a perspective that Western, particularly Caucasian, policy-makers would do well to comprehend."-Laurie Garrett, Foreign Affairs</p>
<p>"The convenience of so much history of diseases in one place is obvious. [An] engrossing book."-Gert Brieger, M.D., New England Journal of Medicine</p>
<p>"An important contribution to our understanding of the history of disease, public health, and imperialism."-Suzanne Austin Alchon, American Historical Review</p>

This book is a major and wide-ranging study of the great epidemic scourges of humanity - plague, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, cholera, and yellow fever/malaria - over the last six centuries. It is also much more. Sheldon Watts, a cultural and social historian who has spent much of his career studying and teaching in the worldʹs South, applies a wholly original perspective to the study of global disease, exploring the connections between the movement of epidemics and the manifestations of imperial power in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and in European homelands. He shows how the perceptions of whom a disease targeted changed over time and effected various political and medical responses. He argues that not only did Western medicine fail to cure the diseases that its own expansion engendered, but that imperial medicine was in fact an agent and tool of empire. -- Publisher description

This book is a major and wide-ranging study of the great epidemic scourges of humanity -- plague, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, cholera, and yellow fever/malaria -- over the last six centuries. It will become the standard account of the way diseases arising through chance, through reckless environmental change engineered by man, or through a combination of each were interpreted in Western Europe and in the colonized world

This book will become the standard account of the way disease has transformed societies and of how the structuring of society, politics, the economy and the medical profession has shaped the spread and containment of epidemics

In the summer of 1347 rats and fleas infected with bubonic plague boarded Genoese merchant ships at Caffa on the Black Sea.

2024-06-27