Yesterday's Plague, Tomorrow's Pandemic?

Numerous deadly diseases have had a marked influence on the history of the human race. This book attempts to bring together various aspects of medical science such as virology and bacteriology and link them to history. It starts by examining a number of basic microbiological concepts and follows this with discussions of the historical development of medicine and microbiology. This is followed by an account of different disease-causing micro-organisms including a section on pathogenic metazoa such as worms. The genetic and social evolution of urban humans is closely linked to the evolution of many epidemic diseases and these are discussed in detail. Chapter 7 brings these two subjects together with an account of the human immune system, the human response to disease and the history and development of immunisation processes. There is a brief chapter on the diseases of antiquity focusing on The Plague of Athens in the fifth century BC. Many readers will find the chapter on the Black Death controversial as it asks the question, "Was this pandemic Bubonic Plague"? A series of chapters dealing with specific diseases follows. These include smallpox that initiated the vaccination process, cholera that led to our modern understanding of sanitation and water purification and tuberculosis that led to pasteurisation. The final chapter asks a number of questions and attempts to answer them. These include, "Will there be further pandemics in the 21st century, is it possible to predict their identity and what effect will they have on the human species"? The author's intention is to make this book accessible to non-scientists, and scientific concepts have been explained as simply as possible. Further reading has also been selected with the intention of it being easily available in non-specialist libraries.