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Did Starvation Protect from Malaria? Distinguishing between Severity and Lethality of Infectious Disease in Colonial India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Sheila Zurbrigg
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Extract

The history of health has increasingly attracted attention from both economic and demographic historians. This interest is reflected in a growing body of empirical data on mortality trends for western Europe and North America dating from before the eighteenth century. The decline in historical mortality, a central concern in this work, has been recognized as primarily attributable to falling death rates from infectious disease, and this development requires interpretation that addresses two factors: changes in levels of exposure to infection and changing levels of human resistance to infectious disease.

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Special Section
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Social Science History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 27 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1997 

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