Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease
Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures

A compelling account of the relentless trajectory of humankind across time and geography.

Tony McMichael (Author)

9780521803113, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 June 2001

430 pages, 33 b/w illus. 4 tables
25.5 x 18.1 x 2.8 cm, 1.097 kg

'This is a transcendental and grandiose book on a par with H. G. Wells' 'History of the World'.' Medical Sociology News

This compelling account charts the relentless trajectory of humankind, and its changing survival and disease patterns, across place and time from when our ancient ancestors roamed the African Savannah to today's populous, industrialised, globalising world. This expansion of human frontiers - geographic, climatic, cultural and technological - has encountered frequent setbacks from disease, famine and dwindling resources. The social and environmental transformations wrought by agrarianism, industrialisation, fertility control, social modernisation, urbanisation and mass consumption have profoundly affected patterns of health and disease. Today, as life expectancies rise, the planet's ecosystems are being damaged by the combined weight of population size and intensive economic activity. Global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion and loss of biodiversity pose large-scale hazards to human health and survival. Recognising this, can we achieve a transition to sustainability? This and other profound questions underlie this chronicle of expansive human activity, social change, environmental impact and their health consequences.

Preface
1. Disease patterns in human biohistory
2. Human biology: the Pleistocene inheritance
3. Adapting to diversity: climate, food and infection
4. Infectious disease: humans and microbes coevolving
5. The third horseman: food, farming and famines
6. The industrial era: the fifth horseman?
7. Longer lives and lower birth rates
8. Modern affluence: lands of milk and honey
9. Cities, social environments and synapses
10. Global environmental change: overstepping limits
11. Health and disease: an ecological perspective
12. Footprints to the future: treading less heavily
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Environmental science, engineering & technology [TQ], Epidemiology & medical statistics [MBNS], Public health & preventive medicine [MBN]