The Cholera Years

Cholera was the classic epidemic disease of the nineteenth century, as the plague had been for the fourteenth. Its defeat was a reflection not only of progress in medical knowledge but of enduring changes in American social thought. Rosenberg has focused his study on New York City, the most highly developed center of this new society. Carefully documented, full of descriptive d...

Cholera was the classic epidemic disease of the nineteenth century, as the plague had been for the fourteenth. Its defeat was a reflection not only of progress in medical knowledge but of enduring changes in American social thought. Rosenberg has focused his study on New York City, the most highly developed center of this new society. Carefully documented, full of descriptive detail, yet written with an urgent sense of the drama of the epidemic years, this narrative is as absorbing for general audiences as it is for the medical historian. In a new Afterword, Rosenberg discusses changes in historical method and concerns since the original publication of "The Cholera Years."

"A major work of interpretation of medical and social thought . . . this volume is also to be commended for its skillful, absorbing presentation of the background and the effects of this dread disease."--I.B. Cohen, "New York Times"

""The Cholera Years" is a masterful analysis of the moral and social interest attached to epidemic disease, providing generally applicable insights into how the connections between social change, changes in knowledge and changes in technical practice may be conceived."--Steven Shapin, "Times Literary Supplement"

"In a way that is all too rarely done, Rosenberg has skillfully interwoven medical, social, and intellectual history to show how medicine and society interacted and changed during the 19th century. The history of medicine here takes its rightful place in the tapestry of human history."--John B. Blake, "Science"

Charles E. Rosenberg is Professor of the History of Science Emeritus & Ernest E. Monrad Professor in the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He is a recipient of the William H. Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) and the George Sarton Medal (for lifetime achievement) from the History of Science Society; he has served as president of the...

Charles E. Rosenberg is Professor of the History of Science Emeritus & Ernest E. Monrad Professor in the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He is a recipient of the William H. Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) and the George Sarton Medal (for lifetime achievement) from the History of Science Society; he has served as president of the AAHM and Society for the Social History of Medicine (UK) and on the executive board of the Organization of American Historians and on the council of the History of Science Society and of the AAHM.