Siting epidemic disease: 3 centuries of American history.

Epidemics of infectious disease have always played a role in American history, and such epidemics are sited in time and place and configured in terms of ecology and demography, available medical knowledge, and cultural values and collective experience. The mix of these variables has changed dramatically since the theocratic world of 17th-century New England, but the relevance of each remains. Avian influenza already exists virtually in Western society in terms of planning, global networks, laboratory research, social expectations, media representations, and a specific shared history based on the memory of the 1918 influenza pandemic.