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This course consists of an analysis of the impact of epidemic diseases on societies and culture from the Black Death to the COVID-19 outbreak. Themes include: infectious diseases and their impact on society; the development of public health measures; the social reactions of mass hysteria and violence; and the issue of emerging and re-emerging diseases. We will discuss the complex historical relations between epidemic disease outbreaks and their cultural, social and political context, describe the experiences of populations and communities living with epidemics under diverse environmental, social and economic conditions, analyse the history of epidemics within a global context of movements of people, ideas and commerce. Students will learn how and why different countries have responded to infectious disease outbreaks in different ways identify how larger structural factors, such as the economy, trade, labor movements, gender and class, are related to an epidemic disease outbreak, and what lessons can be learnt from global pandemics in the past.
This work, probably composed between 1349 and 1353, is a collection of tales by Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian poet and scholar, depicting ten young people who fled the city during the Black Death in Florence, and kept their spirits up and scandal at bay by telling stories. It is regarded as a masterpiece of classical Italian prose with exquisite writing and sophisticated structure. Sex, violence, intrigue, humour, generosity, and compassion, all find a place in a rich, controlled narrative. It is generally acknowledged that Boccaccio borrowed many of the stories from folklore and myth.
This book brings together many of the most important essays by Charles Rosenberg, one of the key figures in recent decades in opening up the history of medicine beyond parochial concerns and instead viewing medicine in the rich currents of intellectual and social change of the past two centuries. The first two sections of essays, focusing on ideas and institutions, are meant at the same time to underline interactions between these realms. The third section of the book focuses on the attempt to use history as a resource for discussion of a medical world that often seems out of control and in a semi-permanent crisis, economic, organizational, and humane.
This book is a cautionary tale about how the stories we tell circumscribe our thinking about global health and human interactions as the world imagines—or refuses to imagine—the next Great Plague. The accounts of communicable disease outbreaks proliferated, and Wald traces how changing ideas about disease emergence and social interaction coalesced in the outbreak narrative. Wald argues that we need to understand the appeal and persistence of the outbreak narrative because the stories we tell about disease emergence have consequences. As they disseminate information, they affect survival rates and contagion routes. They upset economies. They promote or mitigate the stigmatizing of individuals, groups, locales, behaviors, and lifestyles.
