Rats, Lice and History

Hans Zinsser, Allen Grimshaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351494793
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

When Rats, Lice and History appeared in 1935, Hans Zinsser was a highly regarded Harvard biologist who had never written about historical events. Although he had published under a pseudonym, virtually all of his previous writings had dealt with infections and immunity and had appeared either in medical and scientific journals or in book format. Today he is best remembered as the author of Rats, Lice, and History, which gone through multiple editions and remains a masterpiece of science writing for a general readership.To Zinsser, scientific research was high adventure and the investigation of infectious disease, a field of battle. Yet at the same time he maintained a love of literature and philosophy. His goal in Rats, Lice and History was to bring science, philosophy, and literature together to establish the importance of disease, and especially epidemic infectious disease, as a major force in human affairs. Zinsser cast his work as the biography of a disease. In his view, infectious disease simply represented an attempt of a living organism to survive. From a human perspective, an invading pathogen was abnormal; from the perspective of the pathogen it was perfectly normal.This book is devoted to a discussion of the biology of typhus and history of typhus fever in human affairs. Zinsser begins by pointing out that the louse was the constant companion of human beings. Under certain conditions–to wash or to change clothing–lice proliferated. The typhus pathogen was transmitted by rat fleas to human beings, who then transmitted it to other humans and in some strains from human to human.Rats, Lice and History is a tour de force. It combines Zinsser's expertise in biology with his broad knowledge of the humanities

Contents

1. Introduction to the Transaction Edition
2. Preface
3. I In the nature of an explanation and an apology
4. II Being a discussion of the relationship between science and art
5. III Leading up to the definition of bacteria and other parasites, and digressing briefly into the question of the origin of life
6. IV On parasitism in general, and on the necessity of considering the changing nature of infectious diseases in the historical study of epidemics
7. V Being a continuation of Chapter IV, but dealing more particularly with so-called new diseases and with some that have disappeared
8. VI Diseases of the ancient world: a consideration of the epidemic diseases which afflicted the ancient world
9. VII A continuation of the consideration of diseases of the ancients, with particular attention to epidemics and the fall of Rome
10. VIII On the influence of epidemic diseases on political and military history, and on the relative unimportance of generals
11. IX On the louse: we are now ready to consider the environment which has helped to form the character of our subject
12. X More about the louse: the need for this chapter will be apparent to those who have entered into the spirit of this biography
13. XI Much about rats — a little about mice
14. XII We are at last arriving at the point at which we can approach the subject of this biography directly
15. XIII In which we consider the birth, childhood, and adolescence of typhus
16. XIV In which we follow the earliest epidemic exploits of our disease
17. XV Young manhood: the period of early vigor and wild oats
18. XVI Appraisal of a contemporary and prospects of future education and discipline

1. Cover
2. Half Title
3. Title
4. Copyright
5. Dedication
6. Contents
7. Introduction to the Transaction Edition
8. Pref...