Böcker av Joseph P. Byrne

This encyclopedia provides 300 interdisciplinary, cross-referenced entries that document the effect of the plague on Western society across the four centuries of the second plague pandemic, balancing medical history and technical matters with historical, cultural, social, and political factors.Encyclopedia of the Black Death is the first A-Z encyclopedia to cover the second plague pandemic, balancing medical history and technical matters with historical, cultural, social, and political factors and effects in Europe and the Islamic world from 1347-1770. It also bookends the period with entries on Biblical plagues and the Plague of Justinian, as well as modern-era material regarding related topics, such as the work of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, the Third Plague Pandemic of the mid-1800s, and plague in the United States.Unlike previous encyclopedic works about this subject that deal broadly with infectious disease and its social or historical contexts, including the author's own, this interdisciplinary work synthesizes much of the research on the plague and related medical history published in the last decade in accessible, compellingly written entries. Controversial subject areas such as whether "plague" was bubonic plague and the geographic source of plague are treated in a balanced and unbiased manner.

Eight thematic chapters guide the reader through the medical perspective of the plague - medieval and modern - and the plague's impact on society, cities, individuals, and art of the time. An annotated timeline guides the reader through the key events and dates of this recurring disaster.

He ends with a close discussion of the plague at Marseille (1720-22), the last major plague in northern Europe, and the research breakthroughs at the end of the nineteenth century that finally defeated bubonic plague.