Preface -- Epidemic in Athens, 430-427 B.C.E. -- Malaria in ancient Rome -- Plague of the Antonines -- First plague pandemic, 541-747 -- Smallpox epidemic in Japan, 735-737 -- Leprosy in medieval Europe -- Second plague pandemic, 1346-1844 -- "French disease" in sixteenth-century Europe -- Epidemics in sixteenth-century America -- Epidemics and the thirty years' war, 1618-1648 -- Plague in Italian cities, 1630s -- Epidemics in China, 1640-1644 -- Plague in London, 1665 -- Smallpox in Iceland, 1707-1709 -- Plague in Marseilles, 1720-1722 -- Smallpox in Boston, 1721 -- Smallpox in eighteenth-century Europe -- Plague in Moscow, 1771 -- Influenza pandemic, 1781-1782 -- Yellow fever in Hispaniola, 1793-1804 -- Yellow fever in Philadelphia, 1793 -- First cholera pandemic, 1817-1824 -- Consumption in the nineteenth century -- Second cholera pandemic, 1827-1835 -- Third cholera pandemic, 1839-1856 -- "Fevers" and the great famine in Ireland, 1846-1850 -- Typhoid fever in cities, 1850-1920 -- Yellow fever in New Orleans, 1853 -- Fourth cholera pandemic, 1863-1875 -- Carrion's disease in Peru, 1870-1871 -- Smallpox in Europe, 1870-1875 -- Measles in Fiji, 1875 -- Fifth cholera pandemic, 1881-1896 -- Influenza pandemic, 1889-1890 -- Cholera epidemic in Hamburg, 1892 -- Third plague pandemic, 1894-? -- Sixth cholera pandemic, 1899-1923 -- Sleeping sickness in east central Africa, 1900-1905 -- Typhoid Mary's "epidemics" -- Cholera epidemic in Naples, 1910-1911 -- Poliomyelitis in the United States, 1916 -- Influenza pandemic, 1918-1919 -- Lung cancer in the United States, mid-twentieth century -- Poliomyelitis in the United States, 1945-1955 -- Seventh cholera pandemic, 1961-present -- Aids in the United States, 1980s -- Contemporary aids pandemic -- The mad cow crisis and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, 1985-present -- Contemporary malaria -- Contemporary tuberculosis -- Epilogue -- Glossary.