A global history of malaria that traces the natural and social forces that have shaped its spread and made it deadly, while limiting efforts to eliminate it. Malaria sickens hundreds of millions of people—and kills nearly a half a million—each year. Despite massive efforts to eradicate the disease, it remains a major public health problem in poorer tropical regions. But malaria has not always been concentrated in tropical areas. How did malaria disappear from other regions, and why does it persist in the tropics? From Russia to Bengal to Palm Beach, Randall M. Packard's far-ranging narrative shows how the history of malaria has been driven by the interplay of social, biological, economic, and environmental forces. The shifting alignment of these forces has largely determined the social and geographical distribution of the disease, including its initial global expansion, its subsequent retreat to the tropics, and its current persistence. Packard argues that efforts to control and eliminate malaria have often ignored this reality, relying on the use of biotechnologies to fight the disease. Failure to address the forces driving malaria transmission have undermined past control efforts. Describing major changes in both the epidemiology of malaria and efforts to control the disease, the revised edition of this acclaimed history, which was chosen as the 2008 End Malaria Awards Book of the Year in its original printing, • examines recent efforts to eradicate malaria following massive increases in funding and political commitment; • discusses the development of new malaria-fighting biotechnologies, including long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, rapid diagnostic tests, combination artemisinin therapies, and genetically modified mosquitoes; • explores the efficacy of newly developed vaccines; and • explains why eliminating malaria will also require addressing the social forces that drive the disease and building health infrastructures that can identify and treat the last cases of malaria. Authoritative, fascinating, and eye-opening, this short history of malaria concludes with policy recommendations for improving control strategies and saving lives.

Neurology in Tropics (E-book)

Compiles the considerable data on the distribution, pathogenicity, diagnosis, treatment, and control of trematode infections and diseases that have been gathered from various geographical regions over the past few decades. Considers seven major disease groups induced by the parasites that cause morbidity and mortality in both humans and their livestock, mostly in the tropics where the losses are great enough to contribute significantly to socio-economic problems. Addressed to graduate students, researchers, and practitioners of medical and veterinary parasitology and to specialists in tropical diseases or veterinary public health. Published in collaboration with the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp. Double spaced. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book charts the convergence of science, culture, and politics across Portugal's empire, showing how a global geographical concept was born. In accessible, narrative prose, this book explores the unexpected forms that science took in the early modern world. It highlights little-known linkages between Asia and the Atlantic world.

Benjamin Moseley (1742-1819) was an English doctor who left England and spent eighteen years working in Kingston, Jamaica. His time there coincided with the massive expansion of sugar production on the island. Drawing on his own experience as well as an extensive range of classical and contemporary published sources, Moseley presents a lively history of the cultivation and use of sugar cane. The work, first published in 1799 and expanded in this second edition in 1800, discusses the origins of the plant and its later cultivation and development in the Americas, as well as the popularity of refined sugar. Special attention is devoted to the plant's medicinal uses. Moseley also became known for his outspoken opposition to the growing practice of vaccination, and he uses a medical essay in the appendix of this book to launch an attack on the effectiveness of cowpox in inoculations.