_Plagues and Peoples_ by William H. McNeill is an absolutely brilliant work of history; though originally published in 1977 it is still insightful and influential. Just as Brian Fagan in _The Long Summer_ viewed human history through the prism of climatic change, McNeill in this work showed how the world got to be the way it is in large part thanks to disease. How the various communities of humans in the world came to an accommodation with those infectious diseases that were able to reach epidemic proportions, when and whether or not a disease went from a being epidemic to endemic (milder, generally a childhood disease) in a given population, was a major factor in world history and one that was often overlooked. According to McNeill, for too long the role of infectious disease in world history has not been properly taken into account, historians for many decades viewing epidemics as "accidents" and infection (and fear of infection) often having been treated as "unpredictable" and "incomprehensible," as disease "spoiled the web of interpretation and explanation" that historians used to understand the human experience. McNeill sought to chronicle man's history with infectious disease and the far-reaching consequences that resulted when contacts across disease boundaries allowed a new infection to invade a population that had no acquired immunity to its effects. The contemporary global diffusion of childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, and until recently smallpox took thousands of years, a history well covered in this book.
It was due to a near lack of disease that humanity was able to multiple vastly between 40,000 and 10,000 B.C; as humans left the tropical environment of Africa, it left behind not only diseases that were endemic to the environment that had kept mankind in check but additionally moved into non-tropical environments that were not as benign for many parasites (McNeill often referred to infectious diseases as microparasites or simply parasites). The biological checks on humankind in sub-Saharan Africa were absent in temperate and northern climates, with lower temperatures and oftentimes drier conditions inimical to many parasites and with fewer organisms present to become possible parasites.
Unfortunately, humanity began to reverse this relative lack of disease with the advent of agriculture. By multiplying a restricted number of species - both animal and human- dense concentrations of potential food for parasites were created. Weed species arose to fill in the gaps created by such huge distortions in normal ecological systems. Many weeds - such as plant weeds and mice - were relatively easy to control, but microorganisms for centuries defied understanding and control. Most if not all of these microorganisms jumped to humans from livestock, and as parasites that pass directly from human to human with no intermediate host and indeed cannot survive without a large pool of non-immune humans, are "rank newcomers" in terms of the evolution of life on Earth. These diseases are the hallmarks of civilization.
The "domestication" of disease that occurred between 1300 and 1700 was a major landmark in world history, the direct result of two great transportation revolutions, one on land initiated by the Mongols and one on sea initiated by the Europeans during the age of exploration. When diseases first appear they are often spectacularly fatal, so lethal that it is possible for a microorganism to die out locally or even completely. Only after a period of time has passed can hosts and parasites adjust to one another, as the disease becomes a normal, endemic, more or less stable part of civilized society, a relationship less destructive to human hosts and more secure for the parasites, the latter able to count on a fresh supply of susceptible children to infect. Only with continued exposure can a population hope to develop this balance, as older individuals acquire immunity to the disease, reinforced by repeated exposure. Paradoxically, the more diseased a community, the less destructive are its epidemics, as adults are less likely to die, adults being more difficult to replace then infants and more damaging to society when they do perish. The more communications spread between Europe, North America, and the rest of the world, the smaller became the chance of any really devastating disease encounter. Only a radical mutation of an existing disease-causing organism or a new transfer from some other host to humans offered the possibility of any devastating epidemic as the world became one disease pool. Former separate disease pools, once separated by major geographical barriers - mountains, deserts, and oceans - converged into one disease pool as no large group of humans remained isolated from the rest of humanity by the end of the 19th century. To McNeill, a disease regime that he called modern existed only after "endemicity" spread throughout the world, first from port city to port city and then filtering into rural towns and the countryside. It was only after the endemicity of the major childhood diseases - their domestication - occurred that population growth really began to occur worldwide, that cities no longer needed a constant influx of rural migrants to replace large numbers of deaths each year (amazingly this only happened finally in 1900).
In addition to the history of disease and its effects other related topics are covered, such as the development of modern urban sewer systems (thanks in large part to cholera), how changes in agricultural practices affected disease propagation and spread (ironically while many diseases spread from cattle to humans it was the presence of large number of cattle that interrupted the chain of malarial transmission in much of Europe), the advent of modern doctors, acceptance of the germ theory of disease, and the development of vaccines. It was very interesting to learn that Edward Jenner did not invent vaccination; while his role was very important, smallpox inoculation at a folk level existed for hundreds of years in Arabia, North Africa, Persia, India, and China. Also the coverage of bubonic plague, leprosy, and syphilis is especially good in this book, the sections on it making for fascinating reading.
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Popular Highlights in this book
Looked at from the point of view of other organisms, humankind therefore resembles an acute epidemic disease, whose occasional lapses into less virulent forms of behavior have never yet sufficed to permit any really stable, chronic relationship to establish itself.Highlighted by 346 Kindle readers- In leaving tropical environments behind, our ancestors also escaped many of the parasites and disease organisms to which their predecessors and tropical contemporaries were accustomed.Highlighted by 289 Kindle readers
- Eventually agricultural populations became dense enough to sustain bacterial and viral infections indefinitely, even without benefit of an intermediate nonhuman host.Highlighted by 271 Kindle readers
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Top reviews from other countries
- A. LewisReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 24, 2019
good book in good condition
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- Meg NReviewed in Japan on September 18, 2015
Plagues and Peoples reflects Health and History - Why, and How
- TAReviewed in Germany on June 5, 2021
A very interesting book from the ‘70s, highly relevant today
