★★★☆☆ Informative but annoyingly tendentious

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

Jonathan Kennedy

There is a book that everyone who is interested in biology and history should read: William H. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples, published in 1976. I suppose that is long enough ago that we are allowed to call it a classic. Plagues and Peoples is an example of what I call a "I have a new hammer -- look at all these nails!" book. McNeill's new hammer was consideration of the effects of infectious disease on history. He argued that infectious disease was an important force in history, persuasively in my opinion.

Jonathan Kennedy's Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues intends to update McNeill. Kennedy points out quite correctly that the advances in technology since 1976 enable us to see more deeply and clearly into the past of infectious disease than McNeill possibly could and thus to replace much of McNeill's speculation with clearer and more solid answers. His accounts of past plagues are therefore more definite and better documented than McNeill's.

Pathogenesis is, in my opinion, marred by two faults. First, McNeill has a tendency to tell Just So stories. He wants to show that infectious disease had profound effects on history as we conventionally learn it. He does this by describing plagues, then by describing the effects these plagues had on such things as economics, the form of governance, etc. While the stories he tells feel plausible, he rarely has evidence to show that the disease caused the effects asserted. Proving causal relationships is one of the most difficult problems in science and history. The main tool to prove that A causes B isthe experiment: change A and see if changes in B ensue. It is of course extremely difficult to do experiments on historical events. Not impossible; there are such things as Natural Experiments in history. Although Kennedy uses natural experiments when he can, he mostly cannot. Consequently, Kennedy's arguments that diseases caused specific historical events often reduce to "It sounds good."

Second, Kennedy has an axe to grind, or several of them. He has strong beliefs about what we should and should not do, and pushes these beliefs with more force than I felt comfortable with. An egregious example of this is his treatment of Steven Pinker in the final chapter. He introduces Pinker with the words, "Steven Pinker is undoubtedly the most prominent contemporary advocate of this swaggering, triumphant narrative of history." "Swaggering" is not an adjective you use when you intend an objective evaluation of someone's ideas. He also writes

Inherent in Pinker’s argument is the idea that our current economic and political system is fundamentally responsible for this progress and, at most, is only in need of a minor tune-up to optimize the way it functions.

Notice the confession implied by the words "inherent in". Kennedy is here saying "I intend to ascribe to Pinker this view, which he has not explicitly espoused, and drag him for it."

In sum, I learned a great deal about the history of infectious disease, mostly in Europe and North America. In this regard Pathogenesis is a valuable update of Plagues and Peoples. I am left unconvinced of the things Kennedy tries to convince me of. He would have been more convincing if he hadn't tried so hard.

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues on Amazon

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