History of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease - General Health Message Board

irotas · 06-04-2005, 09:37 PM

Recently I've become quite interested in the history of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. I'm interested in the following periods:

1) Pre-agricultural societies (10000+ years ago)
2) Pre-industrial revolution (100+ years ago)
3) Pre-fast food (50+ years ago)
4) Last 10 years

I realize that tracking these diseases in history is a difficult thing to do, since doctors in earlier eras might not have been able to make an accurate diagnosis. However, I would expect that even early physicians would take detailed notes that would allow modern physicians to determine general health trends of people in particular periods.

In particular, I'm interested attempting to identify major societal changes that correspond to changes in rates of these diseases over time.

I'm having a hard time finding good reading material on this topic. Can anyone recommend some books or websites as a starting point?

Thanks,
Adam

last1 · 06-05-2005, 11:03 AM

There are many fine resources out there. You will want to check out the internet sites related to major medical schools (Stanford, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, etc) and then look for articles related to "medical history". A really good book is Susan Sontag's, "Illness as Metaphor" which has a really good bibliogrpahy.

As for issues related to nutrition, you may want to find the home page for the subjects related to your topics.

Once you get into them, they can lead you all over.