Biological weapons have the ability to inflict mass casualties while keeping existing infrastructure intact. They are inexpensive to manufacture, difficult to detect, and have a low signature for attribution. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union began amassing the largest stockpile of biological weapons worldwide. The U.S. Intelligence community repeatedly failed to detect the scope and character of this large-scale Soviet development effort despite implausible explanations for outbreaks of unexplained disease, credible ground reports from informants, and strange behavior patterns viewed through reconnaissance efforts. Toward the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Intelligence realized its grave error. Unfortunately, the majority of these weapons are unaccounted for today. By examining the reasons the Soviet Unionâ s biological weapons program went undetected, the United States may gain a better advantage for future assessments and prevent the large-scale stockpiling and development of biological weapons.

This study deals with the history of smallpox in Sweden between 1750 and 1900 and the two preventive measures that were used against it: inoculation during the eighteenth and vaccination during the nineteenth Century. Between 1750 and 1800 300,000 children died from smallpox in Sweden. During the nineteenth Century smallpox death rates decreased considerably and by the end of the Century the disease was very rare. The purpose of this study has been to examine the occurrence of smallpox at local, regional and national levels and to explain the changes in the light of general models of the epidemiologic transition. Smallpox mortality has been analyzed by demographic variables such as age, sex, and social class. The adaptation and practise of inoculation and vaccination has been examined by using a model of preventive health care behaviour. When smallpox mortality decreased sharply at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a greater proportion of adults were represented. More men than women died. Due to diminished immunity most of those who were vaccinated became susceptible about ten years later. There is only a slight tendency that smallpox impaired a persons fertility. Sterility, however, often resulted from an infection. Disfiguring facial pockmarks were also a serious complication of smallpox infection. Those who had been infected from smallpox married later in life than those who were susceptible or vaccinated. Inoculation was never widely accepted in eighteenth-century Sweden since a fatalistic attitude did not encourage preventive measures. The physicians monopoly and a general lack of organization were other important impediments. Vaccination was successfully implemented in 1802 and became the single most important factor for the decrease in smallpox mortality. By employing the clergy and allowing everyone to practise vaccination a great majority of the new-born were immunized. Vaccination rates were raised further when the method was made compulsory in 1816. Since there were no risks involved and after experiencing the advantages of vaccination during smallpox epidemics the inhabitants of Sweden were easily to persuaded of its benefits. By then smallpox had changed from a fatal killer to a rare disease. / digitalisering@umu

By separating the local from the global, extant historiography fails to capture a total sense of how Africans engaged with change in the 19th and 20th centuries. Existing approaches are Eurocentric in assuming that global forces like colonialism, racism, nationalism and capitalism were the only issues that Africans confronted and thought about. A more complete history of social change is one which integrates local concerns and ideas, expressed in local languages and cosmologies, with Atlantic discourses. The history of Abeokuta in Western Nigeria had been written in a modernization model which interprets the Egba past as how a modern missionary-created elite tried to transform the society from a traditional one. By focusing on elite discourses in a wider scope than the modernization premise, a more complex history emerges in which European influence and colonial power were only part of many forces and resources which the Egba struggled over, modulated and coped with. Power in 19th century Abeokuta was invented by the construction of a national identity, history and traditions to legitimize a central monarchy. The interests of ruling elites converged with those of colonial power towards consolidating these innovations and political centralization. However, other displaced elites always contested such constructions. The crises and violence of the early 20th century were therefore not simply anti-colonial resistance. They were complicated expressions of political dissent against local, colonial and global forces of domination, and reactions to socio-economic challenges. Public health discourse reveals that the Egba did not conceive of European medicine as a dichotomous binary to local medical practices. Rather, it represented an addition of choices to a corpus of medical options. Similarly, Atlantic ideas like democracy and modernization were reduced to local understanding such that they correlated to local knowledge. Modernity for the Egba was therefore not about becoming like Europe; but about pursuing life‘s best-options in the variety of free and forceful influences. Egba society was shaped in the multiple struggles among elites advancing various claims and deploying instruments of power. This history transcends the colonial and renders Africans much more fully as actors in the making of their lives and society.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 2004. / Vita. Bibliography: 71-73.

Thesis--Universidad de Sevilla. / "Apéndice demografico": p. 134-180. Includes bibliographical references (p. 132-134).

Made available in DSpace on 2012-05-07T14:48:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) 000033.pdf: 7866268 bytes, checksum: a1c0bde146b6919403f5eb6d11f6b460 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Este estudo, a partir de uma abordagem histórica, assume como objeto central a metodologia empregada para a erradicação da varíola no Brasil, entendida como parte de um movimento internacional de prevenção da disseminação de doenças transmissíveis, ao longo do século xx, para a qual contribuiu o emprego dos preceitos de vigilância epidemiológica, como ação relevante de saúde pública. Para tanto, será estabelecida uma análise dos variados níveis de circulação de interesses e de saberes, nacionais e internacionais, institucionais e individuais, procurando compreender a consolidação do projeto político-científico que viabilizou a implementação da vigilância epidemiológica na proposta de erradicação mundial da varíola .

Made available in DSpace on 2013-01-07T15:59:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) 1.pdf: 1195556 bytes, checksum: 565b68c13e129d4c5d60ba7ab17c0e07 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Discute as políticas públicas contra a varíola no Brasil, centrando-se nas campanhas para o seu controle e erradicação - Campanha Nacional Contra a Varíola (1962) e Campanha de Erradicação da Varíola (1966). Inicialmente, analisa a história dessa doença no país, observando sua importância epidemiológica e seu significado simbólico como mal epidêmico de grande mortalidade em diversos momentos. A partir dessa análise, procura identificar os fatores que a transformaram em alvo de uma campanha de erradicação.

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de NÃvel Superior / Objetiva-se nessa dissertaÃÃo desenvolver uma anÃlise relativa a constituiÃÃo, estrutura, finalidade e implicaÃÃes no meio social e urbano dos lazaretos da Jacarecanga e da Lagoa Funda, na cidade de Fortaleza, no sÃculo XIX. Nesse sentido, Ã desenvolvido um estudo voltado ao funcionamento dos lazaretos como espaÃo de isolamento destinado a indivÃduos acometidos de varÃola. Diante dessa perspectiva, sÃo debatidas prÃticas e intervenÃÃes voltadas a conter a disseminaÃÃo da varÃola no meio urbano. Visando, assim, entender o modo como se estabeleciam as relaÃÃes, os discursos e as prÃticas em relaÃÃo aos variolosos e os motivos de seus isolamentos nos lazaretos como medida preventiva cautelar. Por fim, busca-se compreender a experiÃncia com a varÃola em Fortaleza, vivenciada nesses ambientes pÃblicos, investigando questÃes associadas a vida urbana, ao cotidiano e Ãs prÃticas de cura na Cidade. / We aim in this dissertation to analyze the constitution, the structure, the operation, the purpose and the implications of the social urban environment expressed in Jacarecanga and Lagoa Fundaâs lazarettos, in the nineteenth century, in Fortaleza city. Our purpose consists of developing a study focused on the lazarettos as a place of isolation for individuals affected by smallpox. In this sense we also discuss the practice and the interventions done to stop the smallpox dissemination within the urban environment. We aim to understand how relationship, discourse and practice were established in relation to the people infected by smallpox and to their isolation within the lazarettos as a preventive measure. Understanding the experience with smallpox in the city, represented by the existence of lazareto, implies in investigate the issues associated to urban life in Fortaleza, to its residents, to healing practices and to the everyday life.

This thesis represents a human history of Tl’chés (Discovery and Chatham Islands) roughly between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. It presents Songhees and Settler life on the archipelago, as well as the dispossession of Songhees lands. Detailing processes of colonialism, as well as Songhees resistance to it, this thesis represents a microcosm of colonialism as it unfolded in the lands now called British Columbia. / Graduate

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