Major Pandemics

This book presents an in-depth investigation of 12 pandemics that have wreaked devastation across the world over the last 700 years, including the bubonic plague, syphilis, yellow fever, leprosy, smallpox, cholera, polio, measles, tuberculosis, influenza, HIV/AIDS, and Covid-19 and coronaviruses.

How many pandemics have there been recently? Where do pandemics come from? How long do pandemics last? How do governments respond? Do pandemics all follow the same pattern of rapid global spread followed by repeated outbreaks? When and how do pandemics “end”?

In addressing these questions, this book reveals the diversity of the origins of pandemics and the variety of ways in which they spread globally. Importantly, it demonstrates that central to the emergence and spread of pandemics is the structure and organisation of human societies and the ways in which they respond to disease outbreaks. This book is an essential resource for students in epidemiology, global health, public health and medicine, as well as anyone interested in how diseases spread and the history of medicine.