Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

by Jonathan Kennedy

Pathogens thrive on inequality and injustice. And even in societies that have seemingly passed through the epidemic revolution, new communicable and non-communicable diseases continue to emerge which disproportionately strike down the poor.

The great improvement in health that high-income countries experienced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was not a result of better medicine—as William McNeill claimed—or even economic growth per se. It was, rather, the consequence of political decisions to make massive investments in drinking water, sanitation, housing and poverty reduction.