Epidemics In Colonial America

Early Measles Epidemics in America *

"Their fruit trees are subject to . . . the Meazels, which is when they are burned and scorched with the Sun . . . [and their] . . . Hoggs sometimes have the Meazels, which is known when their hinder legs are shorter than ordinary." Inasmuch as this quotation from John Josselyn's Account of Two Voyages to New England (1674) reveals interesting variations in the meaning of "Meazels," one may que...

Epidemics and public health in late colonial Somaliland.

The Medical Education of James Lloyd in Colonial America **

The speaker is not unmindful of the honor conferred upon him by the Departments of the History of Medicine and Surgery in being asked to give the third Samuel Clark Harvey Lecture. This is not a copiously elegiac age, but it is well to be reminded that Sam Harvey was a rathe and ripe mind, dedicated, as was Osler, to developing in his daily life the historical approach to medicine. As a surgeon...

Homosexuals and the death penalty in colonial America.

This article traces the legislative history of statues prescribing the death penalty for sodomy in 17th-century New England and in the other American colonies. New England and some middle colonies broke with English legal tradition by adopting explicitly biblical language. After the Revolution, Pennsylvania took the lead, in 1786, in dropping the death penalty.

Labour markets and representative institutions: evidence from colonial British America

The literature has identified the quality of political institutions in the transition region as an essential but understudied component of growth, transition and reform. This paper aims to disentangle the determinants of democratic institutions by investigating if high income inequality is always detrimental to the emergence and stability of such regimes, and under what circumstances labour sca...