Volume 55, Number 9 · May 29, 2008
'The First Great Pandemic in History'
By Eamon Duffy
Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750
edited by Lester K. Little
Cambridge University Press/American Academy in Rome, 360 pp., $85.00
In the spring of 2003, on a visit to Toronto, I was startled by the sight of passersby in the streets with mouths and noses hidden under medical face masks. My trip, it emerged, had coincided with an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Those nervous Torontonians were reacting to speculation in the mass media that this might be the start of a pandemic which could wipe out entire populations, send world financial markets crashing, and form the prelude to the imminent collapse of civilization.
Review, 3570 words
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