Gualde takes readers on a journey, exploring the histories of epidemics, the emergence of new diseases and the return of old ones we thought we had conquered. B... » 

Gualde takes readers on a journey, exploring the histories of epidemics, the emergence of new diseases and the return of old ones we thought we had conquered. Based on two working views of how infectious agents emerge, he argues that the constant interaction between man and micro-organisms could trigger new epidemics similar to those of medieval times.Gualde speaks not only to the scientific aspects of disease and immunology, but to their societal implications, in the poorer southern hemisphere of course, but also to the overdeveloped, antibacterial-soap-washing populations in northern countries. «