Overview

Health crises such as the SARS epidemic and H1N1 have rekindled interest among historians, medical authorities, and government officials in the 1918 influenza pandemic, a crisis that swept the globe in the wake of the First World War and killed approximately 50 million people. Epidemic Encounters zeroes in on Canada, where one-third of the population took ill and fifty-five thousand people died, to consider the various ways in which this country was affected by the pandemic. How did military and medical authorities, health care workers, and ordinary citizens respond? What role did social inequalities play in determining who survived? To answer these questions as they pertained to both local and national contexts, the contributors explore a number of key themes and topics, including the experiences of nurses and Aboriginal peoples, public letter writing in Montreal, the place of the epidemic within industrial modernity, and the relationship between mourning and interwar spiritualism. In the process, they offer new insights into medical history's usefulness in the struggle against epidemic disease.

Full Product Details

9780774822138

Table of Contents

Reviews

This timely book undertakes a detailed and rigorous analysis of the 1918 flu epidemic as it affected Canada. It is a welcome addition to Canadian medical historiography, as well as the international literature of this pandemic. <br> - J.T.H. Connor, John Clinch Professor of Medical Humanities and History of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland

This timely book undertakes a detailed and rigorous analysis of the 1918 flu epidemic as it affected Canada. It is a welcome addition to Canadian medical historiography, as well as the international literature of this pandemic. - J.T.H. Connor, John Clinch Professor of Medical Humanities and History of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland

"""This timely book undertakes a detailed and rigorous analysis of the 1918 flu epidemic as it affected Canada. It is a welcome addition to Canadian medical historiography, as well as the international literature of this pandemic."" - J.T.H. Connor, John Clinch Professor of Medical Humanities and History of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland"

Author Information

Magda Fahrni is an associate professor in the Department of History at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Esyllt W. Jones is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Manitoba. Contributors: Francis Dubois, Denis Goulet, D. Ann Herring, Mark Osborne Humphries, Mary-Ellen Kelm, Ellen Korol, Heather MacDougall, Linda Quiney, Karen Slonim, and Jean-Pierre Thouez.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available