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Author: Arno Karlen
ISBN : 0684822709
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Format: PDF
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AIDS, Lyme disease, and the deadly hantavirus are just a few of the dozens of new diseases to arrive in recent years. Old ones such as TB and cholera have returned with sharper virulence. Where do new diseases come from? Why are old ones back as vicious changelings? Why now? We created this epidemic of epidemics by transforming our environment and behavior - our landscape, technology, and sex lives. Thus we hasten microbes' evolution and our own, making the world a global village for diseases. In Man and Microbes, respected science writer Arno Karlen presents a dramatic panorama of the natural history of disease. Drawing on case studies and tales of medical detection, he uncovers the ills of ancient hunter-gatherers, relates the rise of diseases that came with each domesticated species, and exposes the origins of modern urban epidemics. Citing original sources and extensive research, Karlen recounts the terror of measles and smallpox that raked the ancient empires of Rome and China; the intertwined stories of leprosy and tuberculosis throughout thousands of years of history; the onslaught of European microbes that devastated the peoples of the Americas far more than did the firearms of their conquerors; and the much-forgotten influenza pandemic of 1918 that killed tens of millions. He also analyzes the most recent medical reports of mysterious new diseases from around the world and provides a view of how they have arisen and what they bode for the future. Man and Microbes makes clear that infection is a natural and necessary part of life. It shows how the search for food, shelter, and a safer, more prosperous life has altered the environment, changed the dance of adaptation betweenhumans and microbes, and generated new diseases. The means to surmount the growing public health crisis in our ever-accelerating global society lie in the same ingenuity that created it. Understanding the complex and vital relationships
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- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Touchstone ed edition (May 22, 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0684822709
- ISBN-13: 978-0684822709
- Product Dimensions: 0.7 x 5.4 x 8.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Download Man and Microbes: Disease and Plagues in History and Modern Times
So the author of revelation saw the lethal side of cities (quoted on page 48), or as Mr Arno Karlen better describes-"as farmers and villagers began crowding into cities, this immunologically virgin mass offered a feast to germs lurking in domesticated animals, wastes, filth, and scavengers" (page 48).This book provides a reasonable overview of germs and social history. Mr Karlen traces the development of agriculture and cities to the development of 'crowd diseases', jumping ship from previous group species such as horses, pigs, ducks, rats, etc, or mutating from previously benign forms, or appearing and diappearing from nowhere, leaving little trace. As far as other species influence goes-that old friend the dog is suggested to have contributed no less than 65 diseases to homo sapien (page 39), with 45 from cattle, and 35 fom horses.
The reader will find discussion on the likely origins and developments of eg measles (possibly from distemper in dogs, although Diamond in the book "Guns Germs and Steel" suggests cattle), smallpox (dogs or cattle), influenza (pigs and ducks), common cold (horses?), scarlet fever, typhus, bubonic plague (fleas), syphilis, gonorrhea, cholera (lives in water), AIDS (probably chimps), malaria (mosquito), tuberculosis, leprosy, legionaires disease, and a host of others. Various historical calamities are described such as:
- Athens which lost 1 in 3 people in 430 BC, (unknown- possibly measles, typhoid, scarlet fever, smallpox), and which ended the so-called 'golden age' of Greece.
Published in the UK as `Plague's Progress: A Social History of Man and Disease', Karlen provides the reader here with an excellent introduction to the topic of the natural, as well as social history of the most common human life-threatening diseases. Covered here are all the usual (as well as some more unusual) suspects, from mediaeval plagues to AIDS and CJD; from soldiers not warring due to disease outbreak, to war outbreak being signalled by disease. Although there are some one-liners for conspiracy theorists with regards man-made disease vectors, the principal thesis of this book is that new pandemic and epidemic outbreaks of disease result from changes in human and other microbe host behaviours and the situated environment(s) in which these changes take place. For example, changes in land usage, habitat (as much in the `home' as in the field), species interactions, development & redevelopment, etc.., necessarily give rise to novel ecological niches available for exploitation by any number of host/pathogenic organisms and disease vector transmission pathways. Karlen is correct to further emphasise the point that such opportunist developments and novel disease situations arise from constructive events (aircraft transportation of secondary hosts, air-conditioner habitats and overuse of antibiotics) as much as from destructive events (deforestation and animal extintions give rise to traditional host-parasite species shifts). A useful summary table is provided of the time-line of recent life-threatening contagious diseases, but I found myself annotating the margin with a few more details concerning each (e.g., secondary host - rodent, cattle, insect; virus/bacteria/protozoan organism etc) - all of which was nonetheless available in the text of the book.
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