New book announcement: Germ of an Idea
Announcing: The Germ of an Idea: Contagionism, Religion, and Society
in Britain, 1660-1730 by Margaret DeLacy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
Germ of an Idea shows how a belief in contagion began to spread
among a group of medical reformers who had been forced by nationality and
religious nonconformity to follow alternative pathways to medical
education and professional status in early eighteenth century Britain. It
explains how contagionism shaped their ideas about the nature and
behavior of diseases such as smallpox, plague, syphilis, and consumption
and how it interacted with the belief that diseases were not imbalances,
but specific entities.