Royal Fleas

The king woke up one morning with an itch on his chest. He had been bitten by a flea On the one hand, the insect should be executed for biting the king; on the other hand, it now has royal blood running through its veins. What should you do with a flea that has royal blood? For the answer to this and many more crucial questions, like: Why shoul...

Plague has attained pandemic proportions on three occasions in recorded history. It is within the context of the third, modern pandemic that this book unfolds: an outbreak which took over twelve million lives in India alone. Natasha Sarkar examines for the first time the full social history of this extraordinary medical crisis in India at the end of the nineteenth century, detailing the nature and progress of the disease within a complex colonial environment. Deep-seated colonial anxieties about governing India influenced and are disclosed in responses to the pandemic. Disease carriers were identified and labelled, and scapegoats stigmatized. Western Imperialism and its developments in biomedicine clashed with older indigenous medical systems. Sarkar also considers attitudes, approaches, and mentalities in indigenous Indian society. She explores what individuals and communities made of the disease, and how social prejudices surrounding it and its sufferers became increasingly heightened in a colonial environment. The plague crisis reveals disparate, heterogeneous voices across communities--the contradictions of a multi-religious, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural society. The last great plague of Colonial India is thus portrayed in all its political, social, economic, and demographic dimensions.

A delightful and informative guide to the use of nutrition, vitamins, minerals, massage, herbs and homoeopathy to support your pet shealth and vitality.

"Insects are seldom mentioned in history texts, yet they significantly shaped human history. The Silken Thread: Five Insects and Their Impacts on History tells the stories of just five insects, tied together by a thread originating in the Silk Roads of Asia, and how they have impacted our world. Silkworms have been farmed to produce silk for millennia, creating a history of empires and cultural exchanges; Silk Roads connected East to West, generating trade centers and transferring ideas, philosophies, and religions. The western honey bee feeds countless people, and their crop pollination is worth billions of dollars. Fleas and lice carried bacteria that caused three major plague pandemics, moved along the Silk Roads from Central Asia. Bacteria carried by insects left their ancient clues as DNA embedded in victims' teeth. Lice caused outbreaks of typhus, especially in crowded conditions such as prisons and concentration camps. Typhus aggravated the effects of the Irish potato famine, and Irish refugees took typhus to North America. Yellow fever was transported to the Americas via the trans-Atlantic slave trade, taking and devaluing the lives of millions of Africans. Slaves were brought to the Americas to reduce labor costs in the cultivation of sugarcane, which was itself transported from south Asia along the Silk Roads. Yellow fever caused panic in the United States in the 1700s and 1800s as the virus and its mosquito vector migrated from the Caribbean. Constructing the Panama Canal required defeating mosquitoes that transmitted yellow fever. The silken thread runs through and ties together these five insects and their impacts on history"--

How vermin went from being part of everyone's life to a mark of disease, filth, and lower status. For most of our time on this planet, vermin were considered humanity's common inheritance. Fleas, lice, bedbugs, and rats were universal scourges, as pervasive as hunger or cold, at home in both palaces and hovels. But with the spread of microscopic close-ups of these creatures, the beginnings of sanitary standards, and the rising belief that cleanliness equaled class, vermin began to provide a way to scratch a different itch: the need to feel superior, and to justify the exploitation of those pronounced ethnically—and entomologically—inferior. In Getting Under Our Skin, Lisa T. Sarasohn tells the fascinating story of how vermin came to signify the individuals and classes that society impugns and ostracizes. How did these creatures go from annoyance to social stigma? And how did people thought verminous become considered almost a species of vermin themselves? Focusing on Great Britain and North America, Sarasohn explains how the label "vermin" makes dehumanization and violence possible. She describes how Cromwellians in Ireland and US cavalry on the American frontier both justified slaughter by warning "Nits grow into lice." Nazis not only labeled Jews as vermin, they used insecticides in the gas chambers to kill them during the Holocaust. Concentrating on the insects living in our bodies, clothes, and beds, Sarasohn also looks at rats and their social impact. Besides their powerful symbolic status in all cultures, rats' endurance challenges all human pretentions. From eighteenth-century London merchants anointing their carved bedsteads with roasted cat to repel bedbugs to modern-day hedge fund managers hoping neighbors won't notice exterminators in their penthouses, the studies in this book reveal that vermin continue to fuel our prejudices and threaten our status. Getting Under Our Skin will appeal to cultural historians, naturalists, and to anyone who has ever scratched—and then gazed in horror.