Plagues & poxes: the rise and fall of epidemic disease

The focus of the volume then shifts fully to the disease environments of the New World. Thorough and persuasive articles examine the previously unexplained ailment of dry belly ache, interpreted here as the result of lead poisoning; consider the effect of improved nutrition on a normally malnourished West Indian slave population; and Donald Cooper confirms that the susceptibility to cholera previously identified in American Blacks extended to Brazilian Blacks. Richard Steckel contributes an enterprising interdisciplinary study of slave childhood, reminding us that the common perception of good material treatment did not necessarily extend to the most vulnerable in slave societies. Finally, Thomas Wilson turns to a current medical problem, hypertension, and presents a convincing historical hypothesis for its continued high prevalence amongst Blacks. In a concluding chapter on future avenues of research, Kiple argues that with the boundaries between the physical and social sciences now broken down, black biological history has an exciting future. This volume is evidence of both the vitality and the quality of the work presently being undertaken, and of the enormous opportunities an interdisciplinary approach offers historians in this field.