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Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling During a Medical Nightmare, by Charles L. Briggs, with Clara Mantini-Briggs. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 430 pp. $34.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-520-23031-0.
When contemporary social epidemiology focuses most of its attention on chronic diseases, we often lose sight of the global burden of infectious diseases. Indeed, once past the epidemiological transition, our understanding of disease itself begins to shift dramatically, and infectious diseases appear far less problematic than, say, vascular diseases. Yet, infectious diseases continue to take their toll on much on the world's population. Moreover, they continue to do so despite knowledge about how they are spread and the existence of a broad arsenal of treatments. Focusing on the 1992-1993 cholera epidemic of Venezuela, Charles Briggs (with Clara Mantini-Briggs) has written a thorough, forceful, and at times harrowing reminder that infectious diseases are still present and can be quickly devastating. He has also written an account of the blame-shifting that coincides with an outbreak. The "stories" surrounding cholera, Briggs argues, are much more than stories.
To those familiar with the many histories of modern epidemics, Stories in the Time of Cholera will have both familiar and unfamiliar aspects. On the one hand, this book describes popular metaphors for understanding cholera and elaborates how these metaphors reinforce social divisions. In this regard, it resembles other studies,...