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More About This Textbook
Overview
Combining recent medical discoveries with historical and geographical scholarship, The Cambridge World History of Human Disease traces the concept of disease throughout history and in each major world region. It offers the history and geography of each significant human disease—both historical and contemporary—from AIDS to yellow fever, and touches on the variety of approaches that different medical traditions have used to fight disease. Accessible to laypeople and specialists alike, The Cambridge World History of Human Disease offers an extraordinary glimpse of what is known about human health as the twenty-first century begins. This important book is now being reissued with a fresh new jacket design.
This book contains black-and-white illustrations.
Editorial Reviews
From The Critics
Reviewer: Bernard J. Turnock, MD, MPH(University of Illinois at Chicago)Description: This book represents an enormously challenging and important effort to characterize the history and geography of human diseases and man's response to those diseases. The only previous comprehensive effort of this type was written more than 100 years ago when very little of modern science was available.
Purpose: By capturing the historic, geographic, and epidemiologic aspects of human disease in one encyclopedic work, this book attempts to make that knowledge available to students, scientists and other scholars.
Audience: Humanists and social scientists will find this work especially useful as the scientific and medical complexities are linked to history, geography, and anthropology. The cataloging of this information will also be attractive to the physical scientist and public health audience who will value the social science implications of the history and geography of human disease.
Features: The book provides an interesting and useful system of indexes that provides a virtual road map through this complex collection of essays. The text and illustrations tend to be quite scholarly, and ample and appropriate references are provided throughout.
Assessment: Overall, this book is an important, although enormous undertaking that largely hits its mark despite the unevenness inherent in its numerous contributors and not infrequent duplication among the essays.
Bernard J. Turnock
This book represents an enormously challenging and important effort to characterize the history and geography of human diseases and man's response to those diseases. The only previous comprehensive effort of this type was written more than 100 years ago when very little of modern science was available. By capturing the historic, geographic, and epidemiologic aspects of human disease in one encyclopedic work, this book attempts to make that knowledge available to students, scientists and other scholars. Humanists and social scientists will find this work especially useful as the scientific and medical complexities are linked to history, geography, and anthropology. The cataloging of this information will also be attractive to the physical scientist and public health audience who will value the social science implications of the history and geography of human disease. The book provides an interesting and useful system of indexes that provides a virtual road map through this complex collection of essays. The text and illustrations tend to be quite scholarly, and ample and appropriate references are provided throughout. Overall, this book is an important, although enormous undertaking that largely hits its mark despite the unevenness inherent in its numerous contributors and not infrequent duplication among the essays.Library Journal
In 1886, the last time a task of this scale was approached, August Hirsch was able to compile the Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology (New Syndenham Society, 1883-86) on his own; now, because of the knowledge explosion, it has taken 150 authors. In an attempt to provide an exhaustive and definitive world history of human disease and to document the present state of knowledge for the future, editor Kiple has brought together contributions from medical specialists, historians, anthropologists, and other researchers. Emphasis, however, is on Western medicine. Divided into eight parts, the volume consists of 218 chapters, each two to 15 pages in length, written by specialists but easily accessible to lay readers. Each article is followed by an extensive and useful bibliography. Part 1 offers an overview of the history of disease from prehistory to the present. Part 2 covers human understanding of the concept of disease. Part 3 chronicles genetics and the rise of nontraditional Western specialties such as chiropractic medicine and public health projects. Part 4 presents a demographic approach to disease. Parts 5 through 7 look at disease from a geographical perspective. Part 8, a little more than half the book at 560 pages, is a detailed description of the history and present state of 158 separate diseases, from AIDS to yellow fever. This is an ideal source for reference questions, term papers, hard research data, and clinical background. Highly recommended.-- Eric D. Albright, Galter Health Sciences Lib., Northwestern Univ., ChicagoFrom The Critics
Medical geography and the role that pathogens have played in shaping history are increasingly of interest to researchers. For example, scholars study how the diseases brought to the Americas by the explorers shaped the future of this part of the world The last time an attempt was made to document disease as a maker of history was in the nineteenth century, when August Hirsch published his "Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology". "The Cambridge World History of Human Disease" updates what was recorded more than a century ago. It is both a history and an encyclopedia of disease. The first seven sections present the history; section 8 is the encyclopedia of "Major Human Diseases Past and Present." Each chapter in these sections is separately authored and provides interesting accounts of research findings The first four sections provide background information on concepts of disease, special categories of diseases, and methods of measuring health. The next three discuss disease in different parts of the world during different periods of time (e.g., "Diseases of Antiquity in Japan," "Diseases of the Islamic World"). The remaining half of the book covers individual diseases from AIDS to yellow fever. Coverage is not limited to infectious diseases. There are entries on Down syndrome, epilepsy, and hypertension, for example. For each is provided information on clinical manifestations, distribution, cause, and treatment. The final part of each entry discusses the history and medical geography of the disease: how widespread it was during recorded history, and how and why it spread. This part of the book is fascinating reading for the educated layperson. Extensive bibliographies of medical literature are found at the end of each chapter. Distribution maps are provided for some diseases, tables or charts for others Personal-name and subject indexes conclude the book. A useful aspect of the name index is that thumbnail biographical sketches are provided for the more prominent scientists. The subject index is detailed, providing a multitude of access points This monumental compilation should serve as a starting point for anyone working in medical geography or the history of medicine. As a reference book, the encyclopedic portion will be quite useful in academic and large public libraries.3 Stars from Doody
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Table of Contents
Part I. Medicine and Disease: An Overview: Part II. Changing Concepts of Health and Disease: Part III. Medical Specialities and Disease Prevention: Part IV. Measuring Health: Part V. The History of Human Disease in the World Outside Asia: Part VI. The History of Human Disease in Asia: Part VII. The Geography of Human Disease: Part VIII. The Major Human Diseases Past and Present.