Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground

by Tom Koch

In the seventeenth century, a map of the plague suggested a radical idea—that the disease was carried and spread by humans. In the nineteenth century, maps of cholera cases were used to prove its waterborne nature. More recently, maps charting the swine flu pandemic caused worldwide panic and sent shockwaves through the medical community. In Disease Maps, Tom Koch contends that to understand epidemics and their history we need to think about maps of varying scale, from the individual body to shared symptoms evidenced across cities, nations, and the world.

Disease Maps begins with a brief review of epidemic mapping today and a detailed example of its power. Koch then traces the early history of medical cartography, including pandemics such as European plague and yellow fever, and the advancements in anatomy, printing, and world atlases that paved the way for their mapping. Moving on to the scourge of the nineteenth century—cholera—Koch considers the many choleras argued into existence by the maps of the day, including a new perspective on John Snow’s science and legacy. Finally, Koch addresses contemporary outbreaks such as AIDS, cancer, and H1N1, and reaches into the future, toward the coming epidemics. Ultimately, Disease Maps redefines conventional medical history with new surgical precision, revealing that only in maps do patterns emerge that allow disease theories to be proposed, hypotheses tested, and treatments advanced.

Genres: History, Science, Medicine

344 pages, Hardcover

First published May 30, 2011

About the author

Tom Koch is Adjunct Professor of Medical Geography at the University of British Columbia, a consultant in ethics and gerontology at Alton Medical Centre, Toronto, and Director of Information Outreach, Ltd. He is the author of fourteen previous books, including Thieves of Virtue: When Bioethics Stole Medicine (MIT Press).

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could't wait to read this book. I love public health and history and disease maps. It is also a lovely book to look at with woodcuts and maps and pictures. So what happened? It is written with such academic jargon and obfuscation that it is totally soporific. I then tried skipping the really boring parts and just reading the interesting paragraphs - there weren't many. I ended up just reading the text under the pictures and maps. Who is this for? I knew most of the historical information and even a lot of the mapping information so it can't be for academicians. It is utterly unreadable for anyone not trying to get tenure, so it is not for the educated public. So sad. What a disappointment - really a 1.

[Carol Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting history of how certain epidemic or pandemic diseases came to be understood and eventually controlled, through many years of guessing, research, and geographical mapping. Specifically, the author focusses on Yellow Fever, Cholera, Typhoid, Polio, and cancer (still, of course, largely unsolved).
Although I did find the book quite fascinating and visually attractive, I was dismayed by the lack of editing— far too many typos, wrong use of words, and even incorrect centuries cited!

[Mills College Library]

614.42 K765 2011