Plagues and people meet the microbe hunters

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Bruce Levin, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2007-01-01
• Publisher: Nature
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2007 Nature Publishing Group
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nm0307-239
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Nature Medicine
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 3
• Start Page: 239
• End Page: 239
• Grant/Funding Information: None declared
• Keywords: Virus; Microbes; Biology; Microbiology; Public health; Plagues; Epidemiology
• Research Categories: Health Sciences, Epidemiology; Biology, Microbiology; Biology, General

Abstract

In the history many of us are taught, the fates of societies are determined almost exclusively by the acts of humans, and then primarily humans bearing at least one Y chromosome. In The Power of Plagues, Irwin Sherman challenges this perspective. In the tradition of the Hans Zinsser's 1935 Rats, Lice and History and William McNeil's 1976 Plagues and People, Sherman describes the dominant role of disease in shaping human history.