Disease, Geography and The Market

Historians of disease often follow the concept of ‘framing disease’ put forward by Charles Rosenberg in 1992, which incorporates both the lived reality of the disease and the socio-cultural framework in order to understand the illness. ¹ Since many diseases are based on environmental elements, histories of disease have routinely included the examination of the agency of environment with both natural and man-made aspects, promoting what Christopher Sellers has called ‘a revival of Hippocratic ways of thinking’. ² The integration of physical, environmental, and socio-cultural aspects of disease into historical studies demands different methodological approaches and diverse historiographical elements from various disciplines: medical, biological and environmental sciences for the study of the physical realities of disease and its occurrence; and intellectual, cultural, and social histories for the analysis of human reactions to the disease in the past. Perspectives and analytical tools taken from these disciplines are combined and integrated by medical historians to reconstruct pictures of diseases in the past.