This book is a major and wide-ranging study of the great epidemic scourges of humanity--plague, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, cholera, and yellow fever/malaria--over the last six centuries. It is also much more. Sheldon Watts, a cultural and social historian who has spent much of his career studying and teaching in the world's South, applies a wholly original perspective to the study of global disease, exploring the connections between the movement of epidemics and the manifestations of imperial power in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and in European homelands. He shows how the perceptions of...

This volume provides a concise introduction to the diverse ideas about disease and its treatment throughout the world. Drawing on case studies from ancient Egypt to 21st-century America and Europe, this survey discusses concepts of sickness and forms of treatment in different cultures.