By investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the distrust and violence that erupted with Ebola in 2014, Epidemics challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics, that invariably across time and space, epidemics provoked hatred, blaming of the 'other', and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases, particularly when diseases were mysterious, without known cures or preventivemeasures, as with AIDS during the last two decades of the twentieth century.However, scholars and public intellectuals, especially post-AIDS, have missed a fundamental aspect of the history of epidemics. Instead of sparking hatred and blame, this study traces epidemics' socio-psychological consequences across time and discovers a radically different picture: that epidemic diseases have more often unified societies across class, race, ethnicity, and religion, spurring self-sacrifice and compassion.
Introduction: Hate, Politics, and Compassion Part One: Antiquity and the Middle Ages 1: Epidemics in Antiquity: The Moral Universe and Natural Causes 2: Ancient Epidemics: What the Oracles Had To Say 3: Black Death Persecution and Abandonment 4: Mechanisms for Unity: Saints and Plagues Part Two: Early Modernity 5: Syphilis: Naming and Blaming? 6: Plague Spreaders Part Three: Modernity: Epidemics of Hate 7: Cholera's First European Tour: The Story in the British Isles 8: Cholera on the Continent and in America 9: Cholera Violence: An Italian Story in Comparative Perspective 10: Cholera: A Comparative History of Disturbance 11: Smallpox Cruelty: The Case of North America 12: Smallpox and Collective Violence 13: Smallpox Violence in Victorian Britain Part IV: Modernity: Plagues of Politics 14: Plague since 1894: India 15: Plague Beyond India 16: Myths of Plague Part V: Modernity: Plagues of Compassion 17: Yellow Fever: Stories from Philadelphia and Memphis 18: Yellow Fever: The Broader Picture 19: The Great Influenza: A Forgotten Pandemic? 20: Quarantine and Blame 21: A Pandemic of Compassion 22: Comparative Vistas (I): The Great Influenza 23: Comparative Vistas (II): Beyond the Battlefields 24: Conclusion 25: Epilogue. HIV/AIDS: An Epidemic of Hate, Compassion, and Politics Bibliography and Appendix of Newspapers
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