The Anthropology of Infectious Disease

摘要: Diseases caused by infectious agents have profoundly affected both human history and biology. In demographic terms, diseases-including great epidemics, such as plague smallpox, which devastated populations from ancient to modem times, less dramatic, un­ named viral bacterial infections causing high infant mortality-have likely claimed more lives than all wars, noninfectious diseases , natural disasters taken together. the face of attack microscopic invaders been forced adapt on levels genes culture. As selection, played a major role in evolution species . Infectious also prime mover cultural transformation, societies responded social, economic, political, psychological disrup­ tion engendered acute epidemics (e.g. measles influenza) chronic, debilitating malaria, schistosomiasis) Today, global epidemic acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) provides salient example processes underlying infectious-disease-related transformations. many examples cited this review illustrate, groups often unwittingly facilitated spread