Looks at the connection between trade and disease, tracing the plagues that swept through Eurasia in the fourteenth century and exposes the weaknesses in the current public health system that make our world susceptible to a pandemic.

As a maritime trading nation, the issue of quarantine was one of constant concern to Britain. Whilst naturally keen to promote international trade, there was a constant fear of importing potentially devastating diseases into British territories. In this groundbreaking study, John Booker examines the methods by which British authorities sought to keep their territories free from contagious diseases, and the reactions to, and practical consequences of, these policies. Drawing upon a wealth of documentary sources, Dr Booker paints a vivid picture of this controversial episode of British political and mercantile history, concluding that quarantine was a peculiarly British disaster, doomed to inefficiency by the royal prerogative and concerns for trade and individual liberty. Whilst it may not have fatally hindered the economic development of Britain, it certainly irritated the City and the mercantile elites and remained a source of constant political friction for many years. As such, an understanding of British maritime quarantine provides a fuller picture of attitudes to trade, culture, politics and medicine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Excerpt from Evils of Quarantine Laws, and Non-Existence of Pestilential Contagion: Deduced From the Phenomena of the Plague of the Levant, the Yellow Fever of Spain, and the Cholera Morbus of Aisa My dear Sir A Grateful recollection of the pleasant and instructive hours, which I was so fortunate as to pass in your converse at Madrid, when, abstracted from the avocations of a pursuit beset with jealousy, embarrassed by prejudice, and obstructed by intrigue, I found myself as it were suddenly transported into a region (small indeed, but choice) of freedom, sincerity, and friendship, naturally renders me desirous to mark the circumstances, by inscribing to you the fruits of my researches upon that occasion. It will be gratifying to me to be known, wherever these pages are read, as being deemed not unworthy the regard of man who devotes the energies of a superior mind, the influence of an ample fortune, and by far the greatest portion of his time, to the establishing of means of conferring the greatest sum of knowledge, in the shortest space of time, and consequently the greatest sum of happiness, prosperity, and power, on the rising generation of his countrymen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.