The euphoria about the defeat of epidemics which surrounded the global eradication of smallpox in the 1970s proved short-lived. The advent of AIDS in the following decade, the widening spectrum of other newly-emergent diseases (from Ebola to Hanta virus), and the resurgence of old diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria all suggest that the threat of epidemic diseases remains at an historic high. The World Atlas of Epidemic Diseases provides a timely and scholarly review of over fifty of the most important such diseases at the start of the twenty-first century. This stunningly presented collection of maps, illustrations and commentary offers an authoritative overview of the global distribution of major epidemic diseases on a variety of spatial scales from the local to the global. The Atlas is arranged in an historical sequence, beginning with classic plagues such as the 'Black Death' and cholera and moving on through smallpox and measles to 'modern' diseases such as AIDS and Legionnaires' disease. Over 400 figures are incorporated, including 150 specially drawn maps supported by micrographs of the causative agents, photographs of the disease vectors, historical prints and graphs of changing incidence. The text for each disease includes discussion of its nature and epidemiological features, its origin (where known) and historical impacts, and its global status at the start of the twenty-first century. The book concludes with an informed look towards the future, assessing the probable impacts of major medical advances on life expectancy and the chances of success of programmes for the global eradication of diseases such as polio and measles. The World Atlas of Epidemic Diseases makes a major new contribution to our knowledge of the global burden of disease and is an informative and fascinating reference on the changing distributions of disease. It will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the spread, control and eradication of epidemic disease.

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.

Using over 300 new maps, charts, photographs and associated text, this full-colour Atlas views a century of change in Britain's epidemic landscape. It maps and interprets the retreat of some infectious diseases, the emergence of new infections and the re-emergence of certain historical plagues.

“A compelling read” that reveals how maps became informational tools charting everything from epidemics to slavery (Journal of American History). In the nineteenth century, Americans began to use maps in radically new ways. For the first time, medical men mapped diseases to understand and prevent epidemics, natural scientists mapped climate and rainfall to uncover weather patterns, educators mapped the past to foster national loyalty among students, and Northerners mapped slavery to assess the power of the South. After the Civil War, federal agencies embraced statistical and thematic mapping in order to profile the ethnic, racial, economic, moral, and physical attributes of a reunified nation. By the end of the century, Congress had authorized a national archive of maps, an explicit recognition that old maps were not relics to be discarded but unique records of the nation’s past. All of these experiments involved the realization that maps were not just illustrations of data, but visual tools that were uniquely equipped to convey complex ideas and information. In Mapping the Nation, Susan Schulten charts how maps of epidemic disease, slavery, census statistics, the environment, and the past demonstrated the analytical potential of cartography, and in the process transformed the very meaning of a map. Today, statistical and thematic maps are so ubiquitous that we take for granted that data will be arranged cartographically. Whether for urban planning, public health, marketing, or political strategy, maps have become everyday tools of social organization, governance, and economics. The world we inhabit—saturated with maps and graphic information—grew out of this sea change in spatial thought and representation in the nineteenth century, when Americans learned to see themselves and their nation in new dimensions.

This book illuminates new and more effective infectious disease mapping methods and integrates biogeographic and ecological factors with spatial models. The author treats disease transmission areas for what they are--distributions of species. He argues that complex, fragmented, and highly irregular disease patterns can only be understood when underlying environmental drivers are considered. The result is an modeling approach that challenges static spatial models and provides a framework for recasting disease mapping.

The cholera epidemics that plagued London in the nineteenth century were a turning point in the science of epidemiology and public health, and the use of maps to pinpoint the source of the disease initiated an explosion of medical and social mapping not only in London but throughout the British Empire as well. Mapping the Victorian Social Body explores the impact of such maps on Victorian and, ultimately, present-day perceptions of space. Tracing the development of cholera mapping from the early sanitary period to the later "medical" period of which John Snow's work was a key example, the book explores how maps of cholera outbreaks, residents' responses to those maps, and the novels of Charles Dickens, who drew heavily on this material, contributed to an emerging vision of London as a metropolis. The book then turns to India, the metropole's colonial other and the perceived source of the disease. In India, the book argues, imperial politics took cholera mapping in a wholly different direction and contributed to Britons' perceptions of Indian space as quite different from that of home. The book concludes by tracing the persistence of Victorian themes in current discourse, particularly in terms of the identification of large cities with cancerous growth and of Africa with AIDS.

From a rare map of yellow fever in eighteenth-century New York, to Charles Booth’s famous maps of poverty in nineteenth-century London, an Italian racial zoning map of early twentieth-century Asmara, to a map of wealth disparities in the banlieues of twenty-first-century Paris, Mapping Society traces the evolution of social cartography over the past two centuries. In this richly illustrated book, Laura Vaughan examines maps of ethnic or religious difference, poverty, and health inequalities, demonstrating how they not only serve as historical records of social enquiry, but also constitute inscriptions of social patterns that have been etched deeply on the surface of cities. The book covers themes such as the use of visual rhetoric to change public opinion, the evolution of sociology as an academic practice, changing attitudes to physical disorder, and the complexity of segregation as an urban phenomenon. While the focus is on historical maps, the narrative carries the discussion of the spatial dimensions of social cartography forward to the present day, showing how disciplines such as public health, crime science, and urban planning, chart spatial data in their current practice. Containing examples of space syntax analysis alongside full colour maps and photographs, this volume will appeal to all those interested in the long-term forces that shape how people live in cities.

Offers an innovative study of visual traditions in modern medical history through debates about the causes, impact and spread of AIDS.

Using the varied case studies, this comprehensive resource looks beyond the mechanics of systems and screens to show how local governments can make geographic information systems true management tools. Case studies provide a framework of understanding of the unique capabilities of GIS. 50 maps.

Down the ages, war epidemics have decimated the fighting strength of armies, caused the suspension and cancellation of military operations, and have brought havoc to the civil populations of belligerent and non-belligerent states alike. This book examines the historical occurrence and geographical spread of infectious diseases in association with past wars. It addresses an intrinsically geographical question: how are the spatial dynamics of epidemics influenced by military operations and the directives of war? The term historical geography in the title indicates the authors' primary concern with qualitative analyses of archival source materials over a 150-year time period from 1850, and this is combined with quantitative analyses less frequently associated with historical studies. Written from the viewpoints of historical geography, epidemiology, and spatial analysis, this book examines in four parts the historical occurrence and geographical spread of infectious diseases in association with wars. Part I: War and Disease, surveys war-disease associations from early times to 1850. Part II: Temporal Trends studies time trends since 1850. Part III: A Regional Pattern of War Epidemics, examines grand themes in the war-disease complex. Part IV: Prospects, considers a series of war-related issues of epidemiological significance in the twenty-first century.