Zero Grazing

John Ryle

  • To Blight with Plague: Studies in a Literary Theme by Barbara Fass Leavy
    NYU, 237 pp, £27.95, August 1992, ISBN 0 8147 5059 1
  • Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence edited by Terence Ranger and Paul Slack
    Cambridge, 346 pp, £35.00, April 1992, ISBN 0 521 40276 X
  • The Fourth Horseman: A Short History of Epidemics, Plagues and Other Scourges by Andrew Nikiforuk
    Fourth Estate, 200 pp, £14.99, April 1992, ISBN 1 85702 051 0
  • In Time of Plague: The History and Social Consequences of Lethal Epidemic Disease edited by Arien Mack
    NYU, 272 pp, $35.00, November 1991, ISBN 0 8147 5467 8
  • Miasmas and Disease: Public Health and the Environment in the Pre-Industrial Age by Carlo Cipolla, translated by Elizabeth Potter
    Yale, 101 pp, £16.95, March 1992, ISBN 0 300 04806 8
  • International Journal of STD and Aids. Vol. 11, Supplement 1: Aids and the Epidemics of History edited by Harry Rolin, Richard Creese and Ronald Mann
    Royal Society of Medicine, January 2000, ISBN 0 00 956462 4
  • Monopolies of Loss by Adam Mars-Jones
    Faber, 250 pp, £5.99, September 1992, ISBN 0 571 16691 1
  • Aids in Africa: Its Present and Future Impact edited by Tony Barrett and Piers Blaikie
    Belhaven, 193 pp, £35.00, January 1992, ISBN 1 85293 115 9

Seventy-four years ago a viral pandemic began in America, most likely on a pig farm in Iowa. Fifteen months later it had killed over eighteen million people, 1 per cent of the world’s population, as many as died in two world wars, almost ten times as many as have died in a decade of Aids. The virus, transmitted by airborne mucus and saliva, spread via coughs and sneezes. In San Francisco and other American cities public health officials warned against all body contact, including shaking hands; ordinances were issued forbidding citizens from appearing in public places without face masks. Possibly because of such measures there were only a few thousand deaths in San Francisco during the first year of the pandemic, but elsewhere, including Europe, the toll was much higher. In Alaska and Central Africa and Oceania entire communities were wiped out. In India, it is estimated, the virus claimed twelve million victims – 4 per cent of the population.

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Vol. 14 No. 21 · 5 November 1992 » John Ryle » Zero Grazing (print version)
Pages 12-14 | 4701 words