Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests. Rosemary Drisdelle

Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests



Download Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests



Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests Rosemary Drisdelle ebook pdf
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Page: 280
ISBN: 0520259386, 9780520259386

From Publishers Weekly

As Drisdelle, a clinical parasitologist, shows, human parasites come in many forms and use a panoply of strategies to make a living. As she writes, [H]undreds of species live in human intestines, skin, lungs, muscle, brain, liver, blood, and everywhere else they can find a niche. They can do remarkable damage to every physiological system, leading to death, blindness, and behavioral changes. Drisdelle discusses amoebae, roundworms, tapeworms, mites, and others, often in too much detail. She also examines the historical context in which some parasites have found their way to us and notes their effect on world events, such as the impact Plasmodium falciparum, a protozoa that causes malaria, had on the course of the Vietnam War. She notes that some scholars have even credited malaria with bringing down the Roman Empire.... On the positive side, she demonstrates that, in some cases, with enough political will, dramatic improvements in public health can be made. This is definitely not a book for the squeamish, and readers who lack a special interest in parasites will find it tedious. 29 b&w photos, 2 maps. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From

Yuck! Gross! Who wants to read a book about creepy parasites? Who wants to think about the fact that we might play host to tapeworms, amoebas, or mites? In this natural and social history of the organisms that can infect humans, parasitologist and author Drisdelle has created an irresitably readable account of how parasites affect us and in turn affect human history. Her first example paves the way for the rest of the narrative: the biblical Jericho was a city founded at a desert oasis. Unfortunately, its reputation as a reliable watering place brought traders from many lands who inadvertently brought the worm that causes schistosomiasis. Generations of people tied to one water source sickened, their strength sapped by the parasite, until the Hebrews invaded, conquered the city with little resistance from its weakened inhabitants, and forbade settlement of the blighted area. For this and other examples, the author provides information about the life cycle of the parasite, about its means of infecting its human host, about the medical results of that infection, and finally about how history was changed with the arrival of the parasite. We learn of Stanley exploring �darkest Africa� and bringing sleeping sickness in his wake, of how hookworm assisted the Union victory in the Civil War, of the spread of malaria along the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War, and of toxoplasmosis stopping Martina Navratilova from winning the U.S. Open. An infectious read (pun intended)! --Nancy Bent



MORE EBOOKS:
Download Emily Post's Etiquette, 17th Edition (Thumb Indexed) pdf







Tags: Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests ebook pdf djvu epub
Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests download pdf epub djvu
Download Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests free ebook pdf
Read Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests online book
Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests cheap ebook for kindle and nook
Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests download book
Rosemary Drisdelle ebooks
Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests download pdf rapidshare mediafire fileserve 4shared torrent