Synopses & Reviews
Integrated and novel approach to demographic and epidemiological studies of human populations.
Review
"This excellent and well-written book addresses longstanding questions in historical demography having to do with the factors that affect population size." American Journal of Human Biology
Synopsis
Population cycles are fundamental to human demography and several mathematical techniques are available for analysing the wealth of information that is contained in parish registers. This book shows how such a novel approach to the study of human populations can provide an insight into mortality patterns in past societies and the ways in which they are subtly influenced by levels of nutrition and by cyclical epidemics of lethal infectious diseases. All those interested in the effects of diet and disease on human population cycles will find this book useful.
Table of Contents
Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Tools for demography and epidemiology; 3. Identification of population oscillations: a case study; 4. Density-dependent control and feedback; 5. Modelling the endogenous oscillations and predictions from time-series analysis; 6. Cycles in the grain price series; 7. Interactions of exogenous cycles: a case study; 8. Mortality crises and the effects of the price of wool; 9. Modelling epidemics for the demographer: the dynamics of smallpox in London; 10. Non-linear modelling of the two-yearly epidemics in smallpox: the genesis of chaos?; 11. Measles and whooping cough in London; 12. Integration of the dynamics of infectious diseases with the demography of London; 13. Smallpox in rural towns in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; 14. Infectious diseases in England and Wales in the nineteenth century; 15. Prospectives - towards a meta-population study; References; Index.