The burdens of disease
Subtitle: epidemics and human response in western history
By: J.N. Hays.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New Brunswick, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 361
Subjects: Epidemics -- History.
Description: In this sweeping approach to the history of disease, historian J. N. Hays chronicles perceptions and responses to plague and pestilence over two thousand years of Western history. Hays frames disease as a multidimensional construct, situated at the intersection of history, politics, culture, and medicine, and rooted in mentalities and social relations as much as in biological conditions of pathology.

He shows how diseases affect social and political change, reveal social tensions, and are mediated both within and outside the realm of scientific medicine.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 331-344) and index.