Write a comprehensive anthropological history of a disease

Write a comprehensive anthropological history of a disease

anthropological history of a disease

This project is a focused research project that you carry out on a topic of your choosing that is directly related to the course.  This is an anthropology class (not a medical one) so your task is to take a disease of your choosing that has been a problem for humans for a long time and write a comprehensive anthropological history of it.  This means you will find out information on the disease of your choosing regarding its human and cultural implications – what epidemiologic transition is it most likely to have emerged as a problem for people?  When, where and how?  What cultural aspects of human behavior make the disease more or less dangerous for humans?  When it first showed up, what kinds of traditional or non-Western medicines were used to treat it?  Who was most at risk of getting the disease and dying from it?

I am looking for a CULTURAL HISTORY of the disease, not a medical, clinical or biological history.  I want you to write about the disease from a cultural point of view.  You will have to find sources (remember to cite all the materials you use) that provide some of the cultural context of the disease, and history of the disease in terms of its impact on human cultural behaviors.  If you can’t find research on your disease, you will have to research another disease.

Some good journals to just start checking for more anthropological aspects of ancient diseases would be Medical Anthropology Quarterly, American Anthropologist, International Journal of Paleopathology, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Current Anthropology, Social Science and Medicine or any other anthropological journal.

You can pick one of this diseases.
Tuberculosis
Malaria
Yellow fever
Zika virus

 

Answer preview for write a comprehensive anthropological history of a disease

Anthropological History of Malaria

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