1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

Developo-genic Diseases in Human History

Research Project

Project/Area Number	09610394
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	History of Europe and America
Research Institution	Chuo University
Principal Investigator	MIICHI Masatoshi Chuo University, Faculty of literature, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (30027560)
Project Period (FY)	1997 – 1999
Keywords	Malaria / African Sleeping Sickness / Riven Blind / Yellow Fever / Developo-genic Diseases
Research Abstract	This research project focuses on "developo-genic diseases". The concept was firstly broached in the early 1970s, when optimism concerning genuine economic development in the third world was rapidly replaced by a gloomy outlook. It refers to those pathological conditions which can be interpreted as unforseen consequences of the implementation of development. In this point, it is necessary to emphasize that those phenomena continually occurred since the anicient agricultural revolution, though some scholars write as if they were a product of modern imperialism. I have collected a lot of knowledge on developo-genic diseeases, such as malaria, African sleeping sickness, river blind, yellow fever, schistosomiasis, etc., all over human history. I am now working on a contribution to a volume of collected essays dealing with a history of disease and medicine in modern Asia, which will be published towards the end of this year by Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai. My paper surveys the whole part of contemporary studies on those, infectious diseases, and attempts to propose a new direction of research.