Skip to content
1882
Volume 64, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0008-8994
  • E-ISSN: 1600-0498

Abstract

Abstract

Pre-existing medical conditions and co-infections are common to all human populations, although the natures of the pre-existing conditions and the types of co-infections vary. For these reasons, among others, the arrival of a highly infectious pathogenic agent may differentially affect the disease burden in different sub-populations, as a function of varying combinations of endemic disease, chronic disease, genetic or epigenetic vulnerabilities, compromised immunological status, and socially determined risk exposure. The disease burden may also vary considerably by age cohort and socio-economic status. The social consequences of infection, the medical sequelae, and the paths of recovery from infection may also vary, according to these variables. As a result, different sub-populations may have different experiences of a disease process, including when and how an epidemic comes to an end.

This essay suggests that historians' engagement with path-breaking biological and medical anthropological research will allow new approaches to understanding disease processes that will enrich the study of epidemics and their endings. It is organized in three sections. The first discusses some general approaches to and assumptions about epidemics that are used by many historians. The second introduces new perspectives on the study of historical epidemics opened up by the medical anthropological concept of syndemic disease interactions and by an engagement with biological scientific perspectives. It briefly discusses two rural epidemics-one of anemia caused by the syndemic interaction of hookworm and malaria co-infections in early 20th-century British Malaya, and the other of rebound infections caused by the loss of acquired immunity to falciparum malaria in mid-20th-century Liberia-that illustrate, respectively, the utility of the concept of syndemic disease interactions and the centrality of immunological status in understanding epidemic outbreaks in these discrete populations. The third section addresses some of the research considerations involved in moving beyond the single pathogen model of epidemic disease.

Open-access
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1484/J.CNT.5.128364
2022-06-01
2025-12-05

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/cnt/64/1/J.CNT.5.128364.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1484/J.CNT.5.128364&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Barry, J. M. (2005). The great influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history. New York, NY: Penguin.
  2. Bhattacharya, S. (2006). Expunging variola: The control and eradication of smallpox in India, 1947–1977. Delhi, India: Orient Blackswan.
  3. Charters, E., & Heitman, K. (2021). How epidemics end. Centaurus, 63(1), 115. https://doi.org/10.1111/1600–0498.12370
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Darling, S. T., Barber, M. A., & Hacker, H. P. (1920). Hookworm and malaria research in Malaya, Java, and the Fiji islands: Report of the Uncinariasis Commission to the Orient 1915–1917. New York, NY: Rockefeller Foundation International Health Board.
  5. Drabble, J. H. (1967). The plantation rubber industry in Malaya up to 1922. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 40, 5277.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Drucker, D. J. (2020). Coronavirus infections and Type 2 Diabetes—Shared pathways with therapeutic implications. Endocrine Reviews, 41, 457470. https://doi.org/10.1210/endrev/bnaa011
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Echenberg, M. (2011). Africa in the time of cholera: A history of the pandemics from 1817 to the present. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  8. Eisenberg, M., & Mordechai, L. (2020). The Justinianic plague and global pandemics: The making of the plague concept. The American Historical Review, 125, 16321667.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Graboyes, M. (2014). The malaria imbroglio: Ethics, eradication, and endings in Pare Taveta, East Africa, 1959–1960. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 47, 445471.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Green, M. H. (2020). The four black deaths. The American Historical Review, 125, 16011631.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Hatchett, R. J., Mecher, C. E., & Lipsitch, M. (2007). Public health interventions and epidemic intensity during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 75827587.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Hopkins, D. R. (2002). The greatest killer: Smallpox in history. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  13. Horton, R. (2020). Offline: COVID-19 is not a pandemic. Lancet, 396(10255), 874.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Killingray, D., & Phillips, H. (Eds.). (2003). The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918–1919: New perspectives. London, UK: Routledge.
  15. Lewis, M. (2021). The premonition: A pandemic story. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
  16. Livingston, J. (2005). Debility and the moral imagination in Botswana. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
  17. Markel, H., Lipman, H. B., Navarro, J. A., Sloan, A., Michalsen, J. R., Stern, A. M., & Cetron, M. S. (2007). Nonpharmaceutical interventions implemented by US cities during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. Journal of the American Medical Association, 298(6), 644654.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Markel, H., Stern, A. M., Navarro, A. J., Michalsen, J. R., Monto, A. S., & DiGiovanni Jr., C. (2006). Nonpharmaceutical influenza mitigation strategies, US communities, 1918–1920 pandemic. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 12(12), 19611964.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Packard, R. M. (1989). White plague, black labor: Tuberculosis and the political economy of health and disease in South Africa. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  20. Packard, R. M. (2007). The making of a tropical disease: A short history of malaria. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  21. Rosenberg, C. E. (1992). Explaining epidemics and other studies in the history of medicine. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  22. Singer, M. (1994). AIDS and the health crisis of the US urban poor: The perspective of critical medical anthropology. Social Science & Medicine, 39, 931948.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Singer, M. (2000). A dose of drugs, a touch of violence, a case of AIDS: Conceptualizing the SAVA syndemic. Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology, 28, 1324.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Singer, M. (2009). An introduction to syndemics: A critical systems approach to community and public health. New York, NY: Wiley.
  25. Singer, M., & Clair, S. (2003). Syndemics and public health: Reconceptualizing disease in bio-social context. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 17, 423441.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Singer, M., Bulled, N., Ostrach, B., & Mendenhall, E. (2017). Syndemics and the biosocial conception of health. Lancet, 389, 941950.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Tsai, A. C., Mendenhall, E., Trostle, J. A., & Kawachi, I. (2017). Co-occurring epidemics, syndemics, and population health. Lancet, 389, 978982.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Watson, M. (1921). The prevention of malaria in the Federated Malay States: A record of twenty years' progress. London, UK: John Murray.
  29. Webb, Jr., J. L. A. (2011). The first use of synthetic insecticides for malaria control in tropical Africa: Lessons from Liberia, 1945–1962. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 66, 347376.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Webb, Jr., J. L. A. (2014). The long struggle against malaria in tropical Africa. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  31. Webb, Jr., J. L. A. (2020a). Historical epidemiology and global health history. História, Ciências, Saúde. Manguinhos, 27(supp. 1), 1328. https://doi.org/10.1590/s0104–59702020000300002
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Webb, Jr., J. L. A. (2020b). Syndemic anemia in British Malaya: An early global health encounter with hookworm and malaria co-infections in plantation workers. Social Science & Medicine, 113555. doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113555
  33. Yelin, D., Margalit, I., Yahav, D., Runold, M., & Bruchfeld, J. (2020). Long COVID-19—It's not over until? Clinical Microbiology and Infection. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2020.12.001
/content/journals/10.1484/J.CNT.5.128364
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field.
Please enter a valid email address.
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An error occurred.
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error:
Please enter a valid_number test
aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYnJlcG9sc29ubGluZS5uZXQv