Epidemics & Society, by Frank M. Snowden. Yale University Press, 582 pps. $22. Yale emeritus history professor Frank Snowden didn’t even know about the coronavirus epidemic when his newest book, Epidemics & Society, was published late last year. Propitious timing. “Like all pandemics, COVID-19 is not an accidental or random event,” Snowden writes. “Epidemics afflict […]
Epidemics & Society, by Frank M. Snowden. Yale University Press, 582 pps. $22.
Yale emeritus history professor Frank Snowden didn’t even know about the coronavirus epidemic when his newest book, Epidemics & Society, was published late last year. Propitious timing.
“Like all pandemics, COVID-19 is not an accidental or random event,” Snowden writes. “Epidemics afflict societies through the specific vulnerabilities people have created by their relationships with the environment, other species and each other.”
The study of epidemics, Snowden argues, is not an esoteric pursuit for the scientific specialist, but a major element in the “big picture” of historical change.
Few if any cataclysms before the world wars of the 20th century exerted a more dramatic influence on the development of the Western world than the three major bubonic plague epidemics that terrorized entire populations and transformed the demography of Europe from the 6th century into the middle of the 20th.
In recurring cycles, Snowden explains, the plague exerted a major brake on population growth between the 14th and 18th centuries, substantially infusing both religion and popular culture, “giving rise to a new piety, to cults of plague saints and to passion plays.” In doing so it changed “the relationship of people to their mortality, and indeed to God.” Yikes.
In the 20th century, the scourges of smallpox, cholera and tuberculosis gave way to HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Ebola.
But most of the public-health tools governments employ against little-understood scourges are little changed from six centuries ago. During plague outbreaks Venetian authorities held crews of trading ships in isolation for 40 days.
Snowden concludes that for societies confronted with deadly pandemics, “public health...must override the laws of the marketplace.” The current COVID crisis puts that prescription to the test.
