The world mosquitoes built The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator Timothy C. Winegard Dutton, 2019. 496 pp.

Hemingway, Janet ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3200-7173 (2019) 'The world mosquitoes built The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator Timothy C. Winegard Dutton, 2019. 496 pp.'. Science, Vol 365, Issue 6452, p. 453.

Text Mosquiotes - book review.docx - Accepted Version Download (17kB)

Abstract

Timothy Winegard's entertaining new book, The Mosquito, chronicles the impact of mosquito-borne disease, principally malaria, throughout history. The majority of the book is dedicated to the mosquito's impact on the rise and fall of empires. Alexander the Great, we learn, pulled back from his Indian campaign when his armies were decimated by malaria. (He himself may have later died from malaria.) And the Pontine Marshes, which protected Rome from the attentions of Hannibal at the end of the second Punic War, later contributed to major annual summer epidemics of malaria. During this period, Romans prayed to the fever goddess Febris for relief, and Rome was described as a death trap with a fever-puffing subterranean dragon.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	QX Parasitology > QX 4 General works QX Parasitology > Insects. Other Parasites > QX 510 Mosquitoes WZ History of Medicine. Medical Miscellany > Miscellany Relating to Medicine > WZ 345 Medical writing and publishing. Historiography
Faculty: Department:	Biological Sciences > Vector Biology Department
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax8549
Depositing User:	Samantha Sheldrake
Date Deposited:	01 Nov 2021 14:20
Last Modified:	01 Nov 2021 14:20
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/19202

Statistics

View details

Actions (login required)

Edit Item