HUN100Y1 Chapter 04: chapter 04
Document Summary
In this series of six lectures i want to look at some of the great diseases and their relationship to human history. That relationship has usually been described in terms of the impact of epidemics on societies, politics, economies and cultures. William h. mcneill"s book plagues and peoples, first published in 1976. After surveying human history from its very beginnings in africa up to the present, mcneill concluded that infections disease will surely remain one of the fundamental parameters and determinants of human history. ". Humans claim control over their own destinies, individual and collective [but] that claim falls in the face of attack by tiny organisms". Paul slack"s recent book plague: a very short. Introduction similarly claims that epidemics of plague have shaped the course of human history". I want in other words to approach epidemics historically, as an integral part of human history, rather than as a factor impacting upon it from outside.
