Overview

Doctoring the Black Death provides the first full history of the medical response to the plague that devastated Europe throughout the later Middle Ages. The Black Death has been called humankind’s greatest natural disaster, and the plague has been called the deadliest of all diseases. Thus, John Aberth argues, the Black Death posed one of the greatest challenges the medical profession has ever faced. Drawing on extensive archival research, Aberth has carefully examined the hundreds of plague treatises written in a range of languages from the first outbreak of the Black Death in Europe in 1348-1350 through 1500. He convincingly demonstrates that medieval doctors’ response to the plague was by no means static. He includes doctors’ vivid personal anecdotes, showing how their battles to combat the disease (which often afflicted them personally), and the scale and scope of the plague led many to question ancient authorities. While medieval doctors were, to a large extent, circumscribed by age-old knowledge and understandings of disease, they did formulate an alternative to the miasmatic explanation of disease causation and the usual curative method of bleeding. Aberth dispels many myths and misconceptions about medicine during the Middle Ages and argues that plague doctors formulated a unique and far-reaching response. Indeed, doctors during the Black Death began to conceive of plague as a poison, a conception that had far-reaching implications, both in terms of medical treatment and social and cultural responses to the disease in society as a whole.

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Reviews/Endorsements: none yet, but see reviews of his Plagues in World History Medieval historian Aberth presents interactions of humans and epidemics in case studies of six infectious diseases: plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, influenza, and AIDS. He chose these because they have known pathogens, can be fatal, and have had long histories. Not merely narrative or descriptive, his study is an attempt to demonstrate how human reactions and attitudes to these diseases have in turn shaped how they affect human communities. Going beyond an exercise in the social construction of disease, Aberth's historical focus on the interaction of disease and human response leads him to be optimistic about human abilities to adjust to and even neutralize biomedical effects. The longest chapter, on the plague, reflects the author's professional specialty. The second longest chapter is on AIDS; remaining chapters are 9-24 pages. Aberth's detailed attention to Islamic understandings of and reactions to plague is especially welcome. He opens each chapter by describing the disease and its effects, then for each disease develops unique reactions and attitudes as well as points introduced earlier, weaving an overall pattern of human progress and intransigence, of connections made and opportunities missed. Summing Up: Highly recommended. - CHOICE John Aberth offers a social interpretation of disease throughout history using a comparative global framework. He has a lively writing style, and each chapter is framed by lucid summary descriptions of disease symptoms, progression, transmission, treatments, and the respective debates. Plagues in World History should be a profitable and successful textbook for undergraduate students and general readers. - Journal of World History John Aberth's admirable work on this topic, Plagues in World History, deserves to be engaged with by anyone who is interested in pandemics throughout time. . . .The reader will be most impressed by the wealth of information about the various pandemics and the efforts by medical researchers to combat them up to today . . . [The author] persues his topic from a remarkably balanced position. . . .Both historians and medical researchers will find this book a fascinating read, an excellent digestion of what we know today about plagues in world history. - The Sixteenth Century Journal

Reviews/Endorsements: none yet, but see reviews of his Plagues in World History Medieval historian Aberth presents interactions of humans and epidemics in case studies of six infectious diseases: plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, influenza, and AIDS. He chose these because they have known pathogens, can be fatal, and have had long histories. Not merely narrative or descriptive, his study is an attempt to demonstrate how human reactions and attitudes to these diseases have in turn shaped how they affect human communities. Going beyond an exercise in the social construction of disease, Aberth's historical focus on the interaction of disease and human response leads him to be optimistic about human abilities to adjust to and even neutralize biomedical effects. The longest chapter, on the plague, reflects the author's professional specialty. The second longest chapter is on AIDS; remaining chapters are 9-24 pages. Aberth's detailed attention to Islamic understandings of and reactions to plague is especially welcome. He opens each chapter by describing the disease and its effects, then for each disease develops unique reactions and attitudes as well as points introduced earlier, weaving an overall pattern of human progress and intransigence, of connections made and opportunities missed. Summing Up: Highly recommended. — CHOICE John Aberth offers a social interpretation of disease throughout history using a comparative global framework. He has a lively writing style, and each chapter is framed by lucid summary descriptions of disease symptoms, progression, transmission, treatments, and the respective debates. Plagues in World History should be a profitable and successful textbook for undergraduate students and general readers. — Journal of World History John Aberth's admirable work on this topic, Plagues in World History, deserves to be engaged with by anyone who is interested in pandemics throughout time. . . .The reader will be most impressed by the wealth of information about the various pandemics and the efforts by medical researchers to combat them up to today . . . [The author] persues his topic from a remarkably balanced position. . . .Both historians and medical researchers will find this book a fascinating read, an excellent digestion of what we know today about plagues in world history. — The Sixteenth Century Journal

Author Information

John Aberth holds a PhD in medieval history from the University of Cambridge and is the author of numerous books on disease and the Middle Ages.

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