Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to AIDS
Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to AIDS
Professor of Medieval History
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Abstract
This book challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics. From an interdisciplinary array of scholars, a consensus has emerged: invariably, epidemics in past times provoked class hatred, blame of the ‘other’, or victimization of the diseases’ victims. It is also claimed that when diseases were mysterious, without cures or preventive measures, they more readily provoked ‘sinister connotations’. The evidence for these assumptions, however, comes from a handful of examples—the Black Death, the Great Pox at the end of the sixteenth century, cholera riots of the 1830s, and AIDS, centred almost exclusively on the US experience. By investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics, reaching back before the fifth-century bce Plague of Athens to the eruption of Ebola in 2014, this study traces epidemics’ socio-psychological consequences across time and discovers a radically different picture. First, scholars, especially post-AIDS, have missed a fundamental aspect of the history of epidemics: their remarkable power to unify societies across class, race, ethnicity, and religion, spurring self-sacrifice and compassion. Second, hatred and violence cannot be relegated to a time when diseases were mysterious, before the ‘laboratory revolution’ of the late nineteenth century: in fact, modernity was the great incubator of a disease–hate nexus. Third, even with diseases that have tended to provoke hatred, such as smallpox, poliomyelitis, plague, and cholera, blaming ‘the other’ or victimizing disease bearers has been rare. Instead, the history of epidemics and their socio-psychological consequences has been richer and more varied than scholars and public intellectuals have heretofore allowed.
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Front Matter
- Introduction: Hate, Politics, and Compassion
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Part I Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. -
Part II Early Modernity
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. -
Part III Modernity: Epidemics of Hate
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.-
7
Cholera’s First European Tour: The Story in the British Isles
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8
Cholera on the Continent and in America
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9
Cholera Violence: An Italian Story in Comparative Perspective
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10
Cholera Protest over Time
- 11 Smallpox Cruelty: The Case of North America
- 12 Smallpox and Collective Violence
- 13 Smallpox Violence in Victorian Britain
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7
Cholera’s First European Tour: The Story in the British Isles
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Part IV Modernity: Plagues of Politics
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. -
Part V Modernity: Plagues of Compassion
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.-
17
Yellow Fever: Stories from Philadelphia and Memphis
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18
Yellow Fever: The Broader Picture
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19
The Great Influenza: A Forgotten Pandemic?
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20
The Great Influenza: Quarantine and Blame
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21
The Great Influenza: A Pandemic of Compassion
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22
The Great Influenza: (i) Comparative Vistas
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23
The Great Influenza: (ii) Comparative Vistas—Beyond the Battlefields
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24
Conclusion
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25
Epilogue: HIV/AIDS: A Pandemic of Hate, Compassion, and Politics
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17
Yellow Fever: Stories from Philadelphia and Memphis
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End Matter
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