TY - JOUR
T1 - Coinfection, comorbidity, and syndemics
T2 - On the edges of epidemic historiography
AU - Engelmann, Lukas
N1 - Funding Information:
Once we look beyond the daily spectacle of case and mortality rates, the COVID-19 pandemic presents us with a myriad of highly localized microhistories. Many of these histories are not just stories of COVID-19. The experiences of the disease—contracting the virus, suffering from its debilitating symptoms, and dying of its devastating effects—make for 1 Lukas Engelmann is a Chancellor’s Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the History and Sociology of Biomedicine at the University of Edinburgh. He leads the Epidemy Lab, which is concerned with the history and present of epidemiological reasoning in the twentieth century, funded by an ERC Starting Grant since 2020. Epidemy Lab, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, Chisholm House, Edinburgh EH1 1LZ; [email protected]. Acknowledgements. I would like to thank the editors, Neeraja Sankaran and Stephen P. Weldon for curating this collection and for their valuable feedback. I also extend my thanks to the reviewers for their insightful contributions and productive feedback. Research for this article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 947872).
Funding Information:
I would like to thank the editors, Neeraja Sankaran and Stephen P. Weldon for curating this collection and for their valuable feedback. I also extend my thanks to the reviewers for their insightful contributions and productive feedback. Research for this article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 947872).
PY - 2023/9/27
Y1 - 2023/9/27
N2 - This bibliographic essay introduces three concepts to the historiography of epidemics and pandemics: coinfection, comorbidity, and syndemics. All three of these concepts have seen considerable popularity in the social sciences—and to some extent in epidemiology—but have not been used much in historical scholarship. The essay attributes this to the continued prevalence of disease specificity and its accompanying historical genre, the disease biography, in the history of science, medicine, and public health. Through the introduction of some of the important literature on each of the three concepts the essay seeks to raise conceptual and methodological questions on the boundaries between the social sciences and historical scholarship on epidemics and pandemics. Introducing this scholarship is then aimed to increase capacity for transdisciplinary collaboration and to further integrate the reflection on epidemics of the past with the contemporary analysis of epidemics in their social, cultural and environmental situatedness.
AB - This bibliographic essay introduces three concepts to the historiography of epidemics and pandemics: coinfection, comorbidity, and syndemics. All three of these concepts have seen considerable popularity in the social sciences—and to some extent in epidemiology—but have not been used much in historical scholarship. The essay attributes this to the continued prevalence of disease specificity and its accompanying historical genre, the disease biography, in the history of science, medicine, and public health. Through the introduction of some of the important literature on each of the three concepts the essay seeks to raise conceptual and methodological questions on the boundaries between the social sciences and historical scholarship on epidemics and pandemics. Introducing this scholarship is then aimed to increase capacity for transdisciplinary collaboration and to further integrate the reflection on epidemics of the past with the contemporary analysis of epidemics in their social, cultural and environmental situatedness.
UR - https://pandemics.isiscb.org/essay.html?essayID=12
UR - https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/isis/current
U2 - 10.1086/726981
DO - 10.1086/726981
M3 - Article
SN - 0021-1753
VL - 114
SP - S71-S84
JO - Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society
JF - Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society
IS - S1
ER -