By investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the distrust and violence that erupted with Ebola in 2014, Epidemics challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics, that invariably across time and space, epidemics provoked hatred, blaming of the 'other', and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases, particularly when diseases were mysterious, without known cures or preventive
measures, as with AIDS during the last two decades of the twentieth century.However, scholars and public intellectuals, especially post-AIDS, have missed a fundamental aspect of the
history of epidemics. Instead of sparking hatred and blame, this study traces epidemics' socio-psychological consequences across time and discovers a radically different picture: that epidemic diseases have more often unified societies across class, race, ethnicity, and religion, spurring self-sacrifice and compassion.
By investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the distrust and violence that erupted with Ebola in 2014, Epidemics challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics, that invariably across time and space, epidemics provoked hatred, blaming of the 'other', and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases, particularly when diseases were mysterious, without known cures or preventive
measures, as with AIDS during the last two decades of the twentieth century.However, scholars and public intellectuals, especially post-AIDS, have missed a fundamental aspect of the
history of epidemics. Instead of sparking hatred and blame, this study traces epidemics' socio-psychological consequences across time and discovers a radically different picture: that epidemic diseases have more often unified societies across class, race, ethnicity, and religion, spurring self-sacrifice and compassion.
Introduction: Hate, Politics, and Compassion
Part One: Antiquity and the Middle Ages
1: Epidemics in Antiquity: The Moral Universe and Natural
Causes
2: Ancient Epidemics: What the Oracles Had To Say
3: Black Death Persecution and Abandonment
4: Mechanisms for Unity: Saints and Plagues
Part Two: Early Modernity
5: Syphilis: Naming and Blaming?
6: Plague Spreaders
Part Three: Modernity: Epidemics of Hate
7: Cholera's First European Tour: The Story in the British
Isles
8: Cholera on the Continent and in America
9: Cholera Violence: An Italian Story in Comparative
Perspective
10: Cholera: A Comparative History of Disturbance
11: Smallpox Cruelty: The Case of North America
12: Smallpox and Collective Violence
13: Smallpox Violence in Victorian Britain
Part IV: Modernity: Plagues of Politics
14: Plague since 1894: India
15: Plague Beyond India
16: Myths of Plague
Part V: Modernity: Plagues of Compassion
17: Yellow Fever: Stories from Philadelphia and Memphis
18: Yellow Fever: The Broader Picture
19: The Great Influenza: A Forgotten Pandemic?
20: Quarantine and Blame
21: A Pandemic of Compassion
22: Comparative Vistas (I): The Great Influenza
23: Comparative Vistas (II): Beyond the Battlefields
24: Conclusion
25: Epilogue. HIV/AIDS: An Epidemic of Hate, Compassion, and
Politics
Bibliography and Appendix of Newspapers
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. is Professor of Medieval History at the
University of Glasgow, an Honorary Fellow of the Institute for
Advanced Studies in Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, and
a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Over the past sixteen
years, he has focused on the history of popular unrest in late
medieval and early modern Europe and on the history of disease and
medicine. Cohn's latest two books are Popular Protest in Late
Medieval English
Towns (2013) and Cultures of Plague: Medical Thinking at the End of
the Renaissance (OUP, 2010).
...It is a lens that has once again become relevantto current
events, and Cohn's book may well serve as a useful resourcefor
other researchers who are taking a renewed interest in
epidemics.
*Kristy Wilson Bowers, Assistant Professor; Department of History,
College of Arts and Science,University of Missouri, USA*
Epidemics, conceived in the influenza scare of 2009, is in itself a
commemoration of all the deadliest plagues to have afflicted our
species. ... covering the major infections from 430 BC, through the
Black Death (134751) and syphilis (14945), to cholera (1832
onwards), smallpox in nineteenth-century America, plague in India
since 1894, yellow fever (Southern USA), and the Great Influenza,
with a coda on HIV/AIDS ... Cohn's aim is not just to tell their
stories (although there are stories aplenty), but to tell them from
a new perspective.
*Anne Hardy, Times Literary Supplement*
...this is a work of considerable value. Thanks to Cohn, subsequent
generations of historians may be inclined to study epidemics as a
potential unifying force rather than merely a destructive one.
*Mark Harrison, Journal of Modern History*
In a number of distinct contexts, Cohn uncovers responses of
sympathy and mutual assistance crossing class, religious, gender or
ethnic divides. These take very different forms - some grassroots
movements and some organized centrally. Here, as in all other parts
of the discussion, Cohn establishes that responses to epidemics are
complicated by the specific nature of the disease as well as the
context in which it develops. The mentalities, memories and
manifestations of each varied. By reintroducing a number of
complexities and ambiguities into the study of epidemic disease,
Cohn illustrates the richness of the comparative history of
disease, and his work will likely act as a point of reference and
inspiration for many years to come.
*Jane Stevens Cranshaw, Oxford Brookes University, European History
Quarterly*
The historical breadth of this book, with its meticulous attention
to varied sources and contexts, is simply breathtaking. ... This
book will interest students of the history of medicine as well as
anyone seeking a historical and comparative exploration of
epidemics. It is dense and detailed reading ... this book will
appeal chiefly to specialists at the graduate level and above.
*CHOICE *
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