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Climate, Ecology, and Infectious Human Disease

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The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History

Abstract

This chapter provides an historical overview of the relationship between climate change, ecological change, and infectious human disease. It argues that the forces of climate have long been determinative in establishing the ecological parameters within which human beings and the pathogens that have caused infectious disease have coexisted. Our best understandings of the interactions of climate, ecology, and infectious human disease are based on the integration of perspectives from the biological, social, and historical sciences.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Barrett and Armelagos, 2013, 29–41; Torrey and Yolken, 2005, 14–19.

  2. 2.

    On the tapeworm, see Hoberg et al., 2001; on the roundworm, see Peng and Criscione, 2012.

  3. 3.

    For an impressive effort to synthesize the scientific literature on climate change and its impact on the human past, see Brooke, 2014.

  4. 4.

    Diamond, 1997, 195–214.

  5. 5.

    McNeill, 1976.

  6. 6.

    Webb, 2009, 18–41.

  7. 7.

    This inference is based upon historical evidence from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. During the era of European colonization of tropical Africa, European colonial governmental policies and medical campaigns that included the forced relocation of African populations also influenced the distribution of sleeping sickness. See Courtin et al., 2008; Hoppe, 1997; Lyons, 1992.

  8. 8.

    The explanations of the social collapses are multicausal and contested. See Redman, 1999; Diamond, 2005; McAnany and Yoffee, 2009.

  9. 9.

    Schmid et al., 2015.

  10. 10.

    The influence of famine conditions could persist for several decades. The Great Famine of 1315–17 and the Great Bovine Pestilence of 1319–20 (which produced a prolonged dearth of dairy products) in England and northern Europe rendered the populations more susceptible to the ravages of the bubonic plague (DeWitte and Slavin, 2013). On the susceptibility to infectious diseases associated with poor sanitation, see Mokyr and Ó Gráda, 2002.

  11. 11.

    Schellekens, 1996; Post, 1984.

  12. 12.

    For a recent discussion of the evidence for the Little Ice Age, see White, 2014; on the western Sahel, Webb, 1995.

  13. 13.

    Crosby, 1972.

  14. 14.

    Stannard, 1993.

  15. 15.

    Nothing is known about the geographical origins of typhus, including whether it is an Old World or New World pathogen (Wolfe et al., 2012, 358).

  16. 16.

    Acuña-Soto et al., 2000.

  17. 17.

    Acuña-Soto, 2002; Marr and Kiracofe, 2000.

  18. 18.

    Bryant et al., 2007; Liu et al., 2010.

  19. 19.

    Webb, 2009, 66–91; McNeill, 2010.

  20. 20.

    In the early nineteenth century, researchers isolated medically active compounds such as quinine, a highly effective anti-malarial that was the first disease-specific drug in the Western materia medica. See Webb, 2009.

  21. 21.

    Webb, 2014.

  22. 22.

    Chaves and Koenraadt, 2010.

  23. 23.

    Dennis and Wolman, 1959.

  24. 24.

    The National Academy of Sciences has convened three workshops to explore the relationships between weather events, disease outbreaks, and emerging infections and another workshop to improve our understandings of the relationships between vector-borne disease and environmental and ecological change and human health. See Choffnes and Mack, 2014; Mack et al., 2008; National Research Council, 2001; Lemon, 2008.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Colby College, Waterville, ME, USA

    James L. A. Webb

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  1. James L. A. Webb
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  3. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Franz Mauelshagen

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Webb, J.L.A. (2018). Climate, Ecology, and Infectious Human Disease. In: White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_28

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