| Contagion A combined history of commerce and disease, and their disturbing propensity for traveling together 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. Mark Harrison is professor of the history of medicine and director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford. His previous books include Medicine and Victory: British Military Medicine in the Second World War and The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War , for each of which he was awarded the Templer Medal. He lives in Oxford, UK. |