Both Paul Steiner’s Disease in the Civil War: Natural Biological Warfare in 1861-1865 and David Herlihy’s essay collection The Black Death and the Transformation of the West argue the importance of disease in two time periods and its effect on the future. Herlihy focuses on the Black Death which disrupted the “stalemate” of stabilized population due to large numbers of deaths and the failure of the birth rate to respond to the crisis, causing Europe to rebuild itself and become modernized in the process . Steiner argues that disease played a role in the Civil War which ultimately increased the Union’s chances of winning the war but delayed a quicker victory due to the Union having poorer health than the South in certain battles . Herlihy and Steiner provide strong arguments of disease’s influence on our behaviors and our society, therefore shaping history in numerous ways. To begin, David Herlihy focused much of his career on analyzing the Black Death and its effects and came to the conclusion that Medieval Europe’s stalemate of stable population changed with the arrival of the Black Death which pushed the countries into the direction of change and…show more content… People turned on each other, especially against the Jews. A rumor spread that the Jews poisoned wells and caused the epidemic, resulting in a fear of the minority which invoked burnings like the 900 Jews burned in 1349 at a Jewish cemetery, even though people in power like Pope Clement VI calling the rumor “unthinkable”. Regardless of such rumors and disregard for such religious figures’ authority, people soon looked towards religion and science for answers. With the increase in institutions came a more concentrated medical field which lost faith in the Galenic theory of the body, causing a search for an answer through anatomical investigations and reevaluation of the system that helped lead to the formation of the pathological
