Human Demography and Disease [Paperback]

Integrated and novel approach to demographic and epidemiological studies of human populations.Population cycles are fundamental to human demography and several mathematical techniques are available for analysing the wealth of information that is contained in parish registers. This book shows how such a novel approach to the study of human populations can provide an insight into mortality patterns in past societies and the ways in which they are subtly influenced by levels of nutrition and by cyclical epidemics of lethal infectious diseases. All those interested in the effects of diet and disease on human population cycles will find this book useful.Population cycles are fundamental to human demography and several mathematical techniques are available for analysing the wealth of information that is contained in parish registers. This book shows how such a novel approach to the study of human populations can provide an insight into mortality patterns in past societies and the ways in which they are subtly influenced by levels of nutrition and by cyclical epidemics of lethal infectious diseases. All those interested in the effects of diet and disease on human population cycles will find this book useful.Human Demography and Disease offers an interdisciplinary and integrated perspective on the relationship between historical populations and the dynamics of epidemiological processes. It brings the techniques of time-series analysis and computer matrix modeling to historical demography and geography to extract detailed information concerning the oscillations in births, deaths, migrations and epidemics. This book presents a new way of studying preindustrial communities and explores the subtle, and hitherto undetected effects of fluctuating nutritional levels on mortality patterns and the dynamics of infectious diseases.Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Tools for demography and epidemiology; 3. Identification of population oscillations: a case study; 4. Density-dependent contrl3y