Book ID: CBB001210281

Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease (2012)

unapi

Harrison, Mark (Author)


Yale University Press


Publication Date: 2012
Physical Details: 400 pp.; ill.
Language: English

Much as we take comfort in the belief that modern medicine and public health tactics can protect us from horrifying contagious diseases, such faith is dangerously unfounded. So demonstrates Mark Harrison in this pathbreaking investigation of the intimate connections between trade and disease throughout modern history. For centuries commerce has been the single most important factor in spreading diseases to different parts of the world, the author shows, and today the same is true. But in today's global world, commodities and germs are circulating with unprecedented speed. Beginning with the plagues that ravaged Eurasia in the fourteenth century, Harrison charts both the passage of disease and the desperate measures to prevent it. He examines the emergence of public health in the Western world, its subsequent development elsewhere, and a recurring pattern of misappropriation of quarantines, embargoes, and other sanitary measures for political or economic gain---even for use as weapons of war. In concluding chapters the author exposes the weaknesses of today's public health regulations---a set of rules that not only disrupt the global economy but also fail to protect the public from the afflictions of trade-borne disease.

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Description Covers the period from the middle ages to the present.


Reviewed By

Review Aisenberg, Andrew (2015) Review of "Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (pp. 320-322). unapi

Review Hardy, Anne (2013) Review of "Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease". Journal of Interdisciplinary History (pp. 249-250). unapi

Review Tatem, Andy (2012) Review of "Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease". Nature. unapi

Review Huber, Valeska (2014) Review of "Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 381-382). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001210281/

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Authors & Contributors
Timothy Stainton
Geddes da Filicaia, Marco
Maria Paola Zanoboni
Bollyky, Thomas J.
Ian Morley
Patrick McDonagh
Concepts
Medicine and society
Public health
Epidemics
Medicine, general histories
Disease and diseases
Medicine and politics
Time Periods
Early modern
Modern
Medieval
Ancient
Renaissance
16th century
Places
Europe
England
Sicily
United States
Italy
Germany
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