Interdisciplinary Public Health Reasoning and Epidemic Modelling: The Case of Black Death PDF Download

Author: George Christakos
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540281657
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This multidisciplinary reference takes the reader through all four major phases of interdisciplinary inquiry: adequate conceptualization, rigorous formulation, substantive interpretation, and innovative implementation. The text introduces a novel synthetic paradigm of public health reasoning and epidemic modelling, and implements it with a study of the infamous 14th century AD Black Death disaster that killed at least one-fourth of the European population.

Author: Ole Jørgen Benedictow
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 8376560476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 736

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Book Description
This monograph represents an expansion and deepening of previous works by Ole J. Benedictow - the author of highly esteemed monographs and articles on the history of plague epidemics and historical demography. In the form of a collection of articles, the author presents an in-depth monographic study on the history of plague epidemics in Scandinavian countries and on controversies of the microbiological and epidemiological fundamentals of plague epidemics.

Author: John Aberth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317496094
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Contesting the Middle Ages is a thorough exploration of recent arguments surrounding nine hotly debated topics: the decline and fall of Rome, the Viking invasions, the Crusades, the persecution of minorities, sexuality in the Middle Ages, women within medieval society, intellectual and environmental history, the Black Death, and, lastly, the waning of the Middle Ages. The historiography of the Middle Ages, a term in itself controversial amongst medieval historians, has been continuously debated and rewritten for centuries. In each chapter, John Aberth sets out key historiographical debates in an engaging and informative way, encouraging students to consider the process of writing about history and prompting them to ask questions even of already thoroughly debated subjects, such as why the Roman Empire fell, or what significance the Black Death had both in the late Middle Ages and beyond. Sparking discussion and inspiring examination of the past and its ongoing significance in modern life, Contesting the Middle Ages is essential reading for students of medieval history and historiography.

Author: Mark Welford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315307413
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Geographies of Plague Pandemics synthesizes our current understanding of the spatial and temporal dynamics of plague, Yersinia pestis. The environmental, political, economic, and social impacts of the plague from Ancient Greece to the modern day are examined. Chapters explore the identity of plague DNA, its human mortality, and the source of ancient and modern plagues. This book also discusses the role plague has played in shifting power from Mediterranean Europe to north-western Europe during the 500 years that plague has raged across the continent. The book demonstrates how recent colonial structures influenced the spread and mortality of plague while changing colonial histories. In addition, this book provides critical insight into how plague has shaped modern medicine, public health, and disease monitoring, and what role, if any, it might play as a terror weapon. The scope and breadth of Geographies of Plague Pandemics offers geographers, historians, biologists, and public health educators the opportunity to explore the deep connections among disease and human existence.

Author: Zlata Blazina Tomic
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773597123
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A vibrant city-state on the Adriatic sea, Dubrovnik, also known as Ragusa, was a hub for the international trade between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the city suffered frequent outbreaks of plague. Through a comprehensive analysis of these epidemics in Dubrovnik, Expelling the Plague explores the increasingly sophisticated plague control regulations that were adopted by the city and implemented by its health officials. In 1377, Dubrovnik became the first city in the world to develop and implement quarantine legislation, and in 1390 it established the earliest recorded permanent Health Office. The city’s preoccupation with plague control and the powers granted to its Health Office led to a rich archival record chronicling the city’s experience of plague, its attempts to safeguard public health, and the social effects of its practices of quarantine, prosecution, and punishment. These sources form the foundation of the authors' analysis, in particular the manuscript Libro deli Signori Chazamorbi, 1500-30, a rare health record of the 1526-27 calamitous plague epidemic. Teeming with real people across the spectrum, including gravediggers, laundresses, and plague survivors, it contains the testimonies collected during trial proceedings conducted by health officials against violators of public health regulations. Outlining the contributions of Dubrovnik in conceiving and establishing early public health measures in Europe, Expelling the Plague reveals how health concerns of the past greatly resemble contemporary anxieties about battling epidemics such as SARS, avian flu, and the Ebola virus.

Author: Pavlos Kanaroglou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317051572
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Presenting current research on spatial epidemiology, this book covers topics such as exposure, chronic disease, infectious disease, accessibility to health care settings and new methods in Geographical Information Science and Systems. For epidemiologists, and for the management and administration of health care settings, it is critical to understand the spatial dynamics of disease. For instance, it is crucial that hospital administrators develop an understanding of the flow of patients over time, especially during an outbreak of a particular disease, so they can plan for appropriate levels of staffing and to carry out adaptive prevention measures. Furthermore, understanding where and why a disease occurs at a certain geographic location is vital for decision makers to formulate policy to increase the accessibility to health services (either by prevention, or adding new facilities). Spatial epidemiology relies increasingly on new methodologies, such as clustering algorithms, visualization and space-time modelling, the domain of Geographic Information Science. Implementation of those techniques appears at an increasing pace in commercial Geographic Information Systems, alongside more traditional techniques that are already part of such systems. This book provides the latest methods in GI Science and their use in health related problems.

Author: Louise Cummings
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319150138
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This book argues that in order to be truly effective, public health must embrace a group of reasoning strategies that have traditionally been characterized as informal fallacies. It will be demonstrated that these strategies can facilitate judgements about complex public health issues in contexts of uncertainty. The book explains how scientists and lay people routinely resort to the use of these strategies during consideration of public health problems. Although these strategies are not deductively valid, they are nevertheless rationally warranted procedures. Public health professionals must have a sound understanding of these cognitive strategies in order to engage the public and achieve their public health goals. The book draws upon public health issues as wide ranging as infectious diseases, food safety and the potential impact on human health of new technologies. It examines reasoning in the context of these issues within a large-scale, questionnaire-based survey of nearly 900 members of the public in the UK. In addition, several philosophical themes run throughout the book, including the nature of uncertainty, scientific knowledge and inquiry. The complexity of many public health problems demands an approach to reasoning that cannot be accommodated satisfactorily within a general thinking skills framework. This book shows that by developing an awareness of these reasoning strategies, scientists and members of the public can have a more productive engagement with public health problems.

Author: Ole Jørgen Benedictow
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783275162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1059

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Book Description
Completely revised and updated for this new edition, Benedictow's acclaimed study remains the definitive account of the Black Death and its impact on history. The first edition of The Black Death collected and analysed the many local studies on the disease published in a variety of languages and examined a range of scholarly papers. The medical and epidemiological characteristics of the disease, its geographical origin, its spread across Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and the mortality in the countries and regions for which there are satisfactory studies, are clearly presented and thoroughly discussed. The pattern, pace and seasonality of spread revealed through close scrutiny of these studies exactly reflect current medical work and standard studies on the epidemiology of bubonic plague. Benedictow's findings made it clear that the true mortality rate was far higher than had been previously thought. In the light of those findings, the discussion in the last part of the book showing the Black Death as a turning point in history takes on a new significance. OLE J. BENEDICTOW is Professor of History at the University of Oslo.

Author: Dean Phillip Bell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429777833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Plague in the Early Modern World presents a broad range of primary source materials from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, China, India, and North America that explore the nature and impact of plague and disease in the early modern world. During the early modern period frequent and recurring outbreaks of plague and other epidemics around the world helped to define local identities and they simultaneously forged and subverted social structures, recalibrated demographic patterns, dictated political agendas, and drew upon and tested religious and scientific worldviews. By gathering texts from diverse and often obscure publications and from areas of the globe not commonly studied, Plague in the Early Modern World provides new information and a unique platform for exploring early modern world history from local and global perspectives and examining how early modern people understood and responded to plague at times of distress and normalcy. Including source materials such as memoirs and autobiographies, letters, histories, and literature, as well as demographic statistics, legislation, medical treatises and popular remedies, religious writings, material culture, and the visual arts, the volume will be of great use to students and general readers interested in early modern history and the history of disease.

Author: Jiaping Wu
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0128163429
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
Quantitative Analysis and Modeling of Earth and Environmental Data: Space-Time and Spacetime Data Considerations introduces the notion of chronotopologic data analysis that offers a systematic, quantitative analysis of multi-sourced data and provides information about the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of natural attributes (physical, biological, health, social). It includes models and techniques for handling data that may vary by space and/or time, and aims to improve understanding of the physical laws of change underlying the available numerical datasets, while taking into consideration the in-situ uncertainties and relevant measurement errors (conceptual, technical, computational). It considers the synthesis of scientific theory-based methods (stochastic modeling, modern geostatistics) and data-driven techniques (machine learning, artificial neural networks) so that their individual strengths are combined by acting symbiotically and complementing each other. The notions and methods presented in Quantitative Analysis and Modeling of Earth and Environmental Data: Space-Time and Spacetime Data Considerations cover a wide range of data in various forms and sources, including hard measurements, soft observations, secondary information and auxiliary variables (ground-level measurements, satellite observations, scientific instruments and records, protocols and surveys, empirical models and charts). Including real-world practical applications as well as practice exercises, this book is a comprehensive step-by-step tutorial of theory-based and data-driven techniques that will help students and researchers master data analysis and modeling in earth and environmental sciences (including environmental health and human exposure applications). Explores the analysis and processing of chronotopologic (i.e., space-time and spacetime) data that varies spatially and/or temporally, which is the case with the majority of data in scientific and engineering disciplines Studies the synthesis of scientific theory and empirical evidence (in its various forms) that offers a mathematically rigorous and physically meaningful assessment of real-world phenomena Covers a wide range of data describing a variety of attributes characterizing physical phenomena and systems including earth, ocean and atmospheric variables, environmental and ecological parameters, population health states, disease indicators, and social and economic characteristics Includes case studies and practice exercises at the end of each chapter for both real-world applications and deeper understanding of the concepts presented