People, Environment, Disease and Death

This text looks at illness and death in Britain as something very dependant upon the whole environment. It adopts the environmental and geographical approach to the study of diseases and death from Medieval to modern times. Maps illustrate the favourable or unfavourable mortality experience of different parts of the country. This scientific study is aimed at the non-expert, to show the way in which the health of the British people is, and has been, influenced by (i)their racial history, blood groups, genes, and (ii)the environment - physical (weather, water, soils), biological (bacteria, viruses, pollen, fungi) and human (housing, food, drugs, pollution, noise, tabacco, alcohol, life-style, social environment). The way in which certain affilictions such as plague, cholera, tuberculosis, smallpox and so on have been, and still are more commonly suffered by the residents of one city, county or region than by others, is comprehensively studied - at various stages throughout British history.