Standard histories of infectious disease celebrate brilliant minds such as Florence Nightingale, John Snow, and Robert Koch. In this unorthodox telling, Jim Downs focuses on a forgotten group of contributors: the conscript soldiers, colonial subjects, and enslaved people whose bodies were the experi...

Standard histories of infectious disease celebrate brilliant minds such as Florence Nightingale, John Snow, and Robert Koch. In this unorthodox telling, Jim Downs focuses on a forgotten group of contributors: the conscript soldiers, colonial subjects, and enslaved people whose bodies were the experimental matter on which medical progress relied.