Controlling Contagion

How human institutions—markets, states, communities, religions, guilds and families—have helped both to control and to exacerbate epidemics throughout history. How do societies tackle epidemic disease? In Controlling Contagion , Sheilagh Ogilvie answers this question by exploring seven centuries of pandemics, from the Black Death to Covid-19. For most of history, infectious diseases have killed many more people than famine or war, and in 2019 they still caused one death in four. Today, we deal w