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 modelling to historical demography and geography to extract detailed information concerning the oscillations in births, deaths, migrations and epidemics from parish registers and other data series and to build mathematical models of the population cycles. This book presents a new way of studying pre-industrial communities and explores the subtle, and hitherto undetected effects of fluctuating nutritional levels on mortality patterns and the dynamics of infectious diseases. It will be of interest to researchers, teachers and students in the fields of demography, anthropology, historical geography, social history, population biology and epidemiology.

‘Scott and Duncan offer a fascinating glimpse of the impact of disease on our ancestors that will be of interest to demographers and epidemiologists.’

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

‘This excellent and well-written book addresses longstanding questions in historical demography having to do with the factors that affect population size … A clear introduction lays out the organization of the book and is extremely helpful … the presentation style is just right for the reader who wants the gist rather than to be immersed in detail.’

Source: American Journal of Human Biology

‘In their introduction, Scott and Duncan express the hope that their book will interest readers from the fields of theoretical population biology; demographic, economic, social, medical, agricultural, and geographic history; behaviour; and epidemiology. Because the book spans all these fields, it will be challenging but worthwhile reading for specialists in each of them. I commend it especially to graduate students who want an inspiring example of the use of fresh methods to stimulate fresh thoughts.’

Source: JAMA