Animals and Epidemics: Interspecies Entanglements in Historical Perspective (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9783412525705)

Suspicious bats, culled mink, valuable monkeys, and vaccinated tigers: the recent global pandemic has demonstrated the close interconnectedness of animal and human lives in the modern world. The human attribution of epidemic agency to animals has a long historical tradition, as narratives about animal diseases in antiquity already attest. The contributions to this volume focus on animals as victims, hosts, or vectors of dangerous diseases - or, since the late eighteenth century, also as producers of vaccines and test bodies for new medicines. They also show how epistemic breaks such as the bacteriological turn around 1900 led to large-scale extermination campaigns against rats and other "pests". The changing role of non-human beings in epidemics thus reflects both long continuities and fundamental shifts in relations between humans and other animals.

Author: Axel C. Huntelmann
ISBN-10: 3412525707
ISBN-13: 9783412525705
Publisher: Bohlau Verlag Koln
Language: English
Published: 12/04/2023
Pages: 37
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1920.18lbs