Volume 49, Number 2 · February 14, 2002
The Fastest Killer
By Edmund S. Morgan
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82
by Elizabeth A. Fenn
Hill and Wang, 370 pp., $25.00
Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox
by Jonathan B. Tucker
Atlantic Monthly Press, 291 pp., $26.00
As a species, human beings have always been distressingly assiduous in devising ways to kill each other. Until recently, however, their best efforts have not equaled the random operations of disease. Disease has seldom been thought of as part of the human arsenal of destruction, probably because it once lay beyond effective human control and may still. But in most of the wars in modern memory it has been a bigger killer than battle. There is no obvious connection between the two, but the mere assemblage of men for fighting has generally been more deadly than the weapons they deploy.
Review, 3540 words
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