Heredity and infection : the history of disease transmission /

Death and disease are no longer thought of as acts of some higher power. The Age of Reason, subsequent technological developments, and the systematic scientific inquiry into the laws of nature have provided more and more clarity of mysterious phenomena. The last century is straddled by two beginnings of enormous consequences for explaining disease: bacteriology and gene manipulation. This book, volume 14 in the series "Studies in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine," collects 11 scholarly (well referenced) contributions, plus introductory and concluding chapters, by 13 historians from five countries. The book focuses on the arduous acquisition of insight, through discovery and debate, into the simple question, "Why am I ill?" The answer may be mind-boggling: disease is a multifactorial concept with many contributors such as hostile agent(s), host susceptibility, and presence or absence of a variety of other factors. How we know the origins (transmission/acquisition/inherited defect) and mechanisms of tuberculosis, cancer, and AIDS is given much attention here. It makes for exciting reading to learn the slowly crystallizing truths about matters of life and death. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. M. Kroger emeritus, Pennsylvania State University, University Park Campus