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The Black Death was a disaster of huge magnitude, shaking medieval Europe and beyond to its economic and social core. Building upon his acclaimed study of 2004, Ole Benedictow here draws upon new scholarship and research to present a comprehensive, definitive account of the Black Death and its impact on European history. The medical and epidemiological characteristics of the disease, its geographical origin, its spread across Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Russia, and the mortality in the countries and regions for which there are satisfactory studies, are clearly presented and thoroughly discussed. The pattern, pace and seasonality of the spread of the disease reflect current medical work and standard studies on the epidemiology of bubonic plague. Benedictow's findings make it clear that the true mortality rate was far higher than had been previously thought: some 60% of Europe's population. In the light of those findings, the discussion of the Black Death as a turning point in history takes on a new significance.

This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks at how mass infectious outbreaks have shaped society, from the Black Death to today, and in a new preface addresses the global threat of COVID-19. In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history, and warfare. A multidisciplinary and comparative investigation of the medical and social history of the major epidemics, this volume touches on themes such as the evolution of medical therapy, plague literature, poverty, the environment, and mass hysteria. In addition to providing historical perspective on diseases such as smallpox, cholera, and tuberculosis, Snowden examines the fallout from recent epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Ebola and the question of the world's preparedness for the next generation of diseases.

Fit to Practice proposes a new narrative of the making of the modern British medical profession, situating it in relation to the imperatives and tensions of national and imperial interests. The narrative is interwoven withthe institutional history of the General Medical Council (GMC), the main regulatory body of the medical profession. The GMC's management of the medical register from 1858 to 1980 offers important insight into the political underpinning of the profession, particularly when it came to regulating who was fit to practice medicine, under what conditions, and where. Technically, admission to the British medical register endowed all doctors with common rights andprivileges. Yet the differential treatment of women in the nineteenth century, Jewish medical refugees during World War II, and Indian doctors both before and after decolonization reveals the persistence of hierarchies of gender,national identity, and race in determining who was fit to practice British medicine. Part 1 of the book, which spans from 1858 to 1948, focuses on the transformation of the British Empire from a destination for the surplus production of domestic medical graduates to a critical source of medical labor for Britain during wartime. Part 2 examines the postwar causes and consequences of the unprecedented globalization of the domestic profession. Douglas M. Haynes is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine.

In The Medieval Economy of Salvation, Adam J. Davis shows how the burgeoning commercial economy of western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, alongside an emerging culture of Christian charity, led to the establishment of hundreds of hospitals and leper houses. Focusing on the county of Champagne, he looks at the ways in which charitable organizations and individuals--townspeople, merchants, aristocrats, and ecclesiastics--saw in these new institutions a means of infusing charitable giving and service with new social significance and heightened expectations of spiritual rewards. In tracing the rise of the medieval hospital during a period of intense urbanization and the transition from a gift economy to a commercial one, Davis makes clear how embedded this charitable institution was in the wider social, cultural, religious, and economic fabric of medieval life.

Pyrrhic Progress analyses over half a century of antibiotic use, regulation, and resistance in US and British food production. Mass-introduced after 1945, antibiotics helped revolutionize post-war agriculture. Food producers used antibiotics to prevent and treat disease, protect plants, preserve food, and promote animals' growth. Many soon became dependent on routine antibiotic use to sustain and increase production. The resulting growth of antibiotic infrastructures came at a price. Critics blamed antibiotics for leaving dangerous residues in food, enabling bad animal welfare, and selecting for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria, which could no longer be treated with antibiotics. Pyrrhic Progress reconstructs the complicated negotiations that accompanied this process of risk prioritization between consumers, farmers, and regulators on both sides
of the Atlantic. Unsurprisingly, solutions differed: while Europeans implemented precautionary antibiotic restrictions to curb AMR, consumer concerns and cost-benefit assessments made US regulators focus on curbing drug residues in food. The result was a growing divergence of antibiotic stewardship and a rise of AMR. Kirchhelle's comprehensive analysis of evolving non-human antibiotic use and the historical complexities of antibiotic stewardship provides important insights for current debates on the global burden of AMR.