This work chronicles the perceptions and responses to plague and pestilence over two thousand years of Western history. It frames disease as a multidimensional construct, situated at the intersection of history, politics, culture, and medicine, and rooted in mentalities and social relations as much as in biological conditions of pathology. It shows how diseases affect social and political change, reveal social tensions, and are mediated both within and outside the realm of scientific medicine.

The western inheritance : Greek and Roman ideas about disease -- Medieval diseases and responses -- The great plague pandemic -- New diseases and transatlantic exchanges -- Continuity and change : magic, religion, medicine, and science, 500-1700 -- Disease and the enlightenment -- Cholera and sanitation -- Tuberculosis and poverty -- Disease, medicine, and western imperialism -- The scientific view of disease and the triumph of professional medicine -- The apparent end of epidemics -- Disease and power.