Title: Yellow Fever, Black Goddess
First published: 1996
Description: Yellow Fever, Black Goddess turns the tables on past accounts,    focusing not on the microbe hunters but on the microbes themselves, putting     these exotic life-forms at center stage, telling their story as they fight to   live at the very edge of the possible. Humans acknowledge the existence of our  planet's primitive coinhabitants only when they do their worst - emerging to    strike down whole populations through rampaging epidemics.

But in fact, the protozoa, bacteria, and viruses that cause such  diseases as yellow fever and cholera - which is symbolized by the black goddess - lead complex lives in their own right, struggling ever further out on their   evolutionary limbs.

In order to deal with these microbes we must understand the       entire evolutionary environment in which they function - from tropical breeding grounds to the resistant temperate zones, from insect viruses to human plagues - and through this alone can we hope to control them. By giving these organisms  their due in this remarkable account, Christopher Wills points the way toward   gaining that mastery.
Subjects: Epidemics, History, Infectieziekten, Epidemieën, Cholera, Disease Outbreaks, Microbiology, Maladie infectieuse, Plague, Syphilis, Épidémie, 20e s., Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, Fiction, general, Epidemiology, Communicable Diseases
LC classification: RA649 .W55 1996