| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 273 words from this article are provided below; about 596 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Methods/Theory

Susan Scott and Christopher J. Duncan. Human Demography and Disease. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xvi, 354. $74.95.

This daunting, unique book reflects the combined efforts of a historical demographer and a computer matrix modeler of biological systems to apply the statistical technique of time-series analysis to a range of different data to provide an original integrated approach to the study of the interaction of population cycles and lethal infectious diseases in England from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The result is an exceedingly complex statistical and quantitative work that is based on the analysis of parish registers, bills of mortality, grain price series, and meteorological readings to produce computer-generated, mathematical models of the dynamics of such devastating epidemic diseases as smallpox, measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and diphtheria and their effects on population cycles over some ten generations. 1

Many of the techniques of family reconstitution are mated with time-series analysis to examine in depth population oscillations primarily in the northwestern counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland and to correlate demographic experience, particularly mortality, with such variables as climate, weather, and commodity prices. To broaden the applicability of their techniques for the construction of what Susan Scott and Christopher J. Duncan hope will become a new field of "metapopulation" studies, they also examine comparatively the interaction of disease and demographic cycles in other selected areas of the country, including London and York. Much of the book is taken up with an explanation of the statistical methodology and mathematical formulas employed and reflected in dozens of tables and figures depicting the results of computer modeling. . . .

There are about 596 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.