Download or read book The Burdens of Disease written by J. N. Hays and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sweeping approach to the history of disease, the author, a historian chronicles perceptions and responses to plague and pestilence over two thousand years of Western history. He frames disease as a multidimensional construct, situated at the intersection of history, politics, culture, and medicine, and rooted in mentalities and social relations as much as in biological conditions of pathology. He shows how diseases affect social and political change, reveal social tensions, and are mediated both within and outside the realm of scientific medicine.