The Cambridge world history of human disease

As a vigorous field of inquiry, the history and geography of disease, understandably in light of the events of recent years, is enjoying a renewed surge in interest. Now come Cambridge Press and Kenneth Kiple with a monumental new Baedeker for this field. It will be a touchstone for years to come. Even if the sterile debate between relativist and (the nearly vanquished) progressivists, along with biological "realities" such as the virus of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome, were still confined to a few African green monkeys, these times seem ripe for a tome such as Kiple's. A century since August Hirsch's Handbook ofgeographical and historical pathology, and over a generation since Erwin Ackerknecht's slender History and geography of the most important diseases (English translations, 1883-1886 and 1965, respectively), the historiography of medicine has moved to a mature middle ground upon which disease history may be viewed in multifactorial terms. This willingness to look at disease through a multifaceted lens is well reflected in the volume under review. Leading experts from at least three continents and from the fields of epidemiology, geography, medicine and medical history, attempt a survey of the evolution of patterns of disease from antiquity to the present, across every continent except Antarctica, and couched in both conceptual and epidemic terms. To assay such a daunting task between the covers of a single (admittedly very heavy) volume, the editors usefully divide it into eight subsections. The first, 'Medicine and disease: an overview', encompasses four brief essays by Guenter Risse (on Hippocrates to germ theory in nine easy pages), Paul Unschuld (on China), Nancy Gallagher (on Indian medicine) and David Stannard (on disease in relation to human migration). Part II, 'Changing concepts of health and disease', treats of disease theory in six different settings and includes nice essays by Joel Howell on the heart, and by Thomas Benedek with the chief editor on cancer. Part III, 'Medical specialties and disease prevention', presents a loose-knit array of topics from chiropractic to public health: eleven topics in a hundred pages. Part IV, 'Measuring health', supplies five short essays, better furnished than most of the book with appropriate graphs and illustrations, on aspects of epidemiology. Parts V and VI, 'The history of human disease in the world outside Asia' (11 chapters), and 'The history of human disease in Asia' (14 chapters), provide a partly chronological and partly geographical sweep through the many and varied ecological catastrophes and lulls created by the shifting relations of society and "disease writ large". Every canonical "ism" from colonialism to humoralism comes into play and gets (more or less) its due. The Americas are represented (and probably under-represented) here, in part V in but three, crisp essays, by Jane E Buikstra (pre-Columbian America), Anne Ramenofsky (for the period 1492-1700), and Stephen Kunitz (1700-present). 'The geography of human disease' forms the focus of the 100 pages or so of part VII, whose nine authors rely on a relatively more biologistic and anthropological perspective than the foregoing two parts. Both, or all, of these perspectives, are complementary and welcome. The eighth and by far longest part of the Cambridge world history, depicting 'Major human diseases past and present', offers 158, mostly brief but a few extended, chapters on everything from Dropsy (J Worth Estes) to Cytomegalovirus (R H Kampmeier). Fascioliasis and Fasciolopsiasis (both David Patterson) are here alongside Brown Lung (Daniel Fox), AIDS (Allan Brandt), Diabetes