Centaurus. Journal of the European Society for the History of Science, Volume 65 (2023), Issue 1

At the crossroads of environmental and medical history, this special issue deals with "pathogenic environments", i.e. regions, places or milieus perceived as particularly harmful to health. First, it sheds light on how some environments are constructed as such by a number of medical specialties, like occupational or tropical medicine. These spaces are also objects of lay thinking, from legends on cursed lands to modern popular epidemiology. Secondly, pathogenic environments are also living spaces. In order to survive in hostile environments, dwellers adjust their daily behaviours, from their diets to their working practices. Finally, pathogenic environments can also be modified as a whole and shaped through architecture, cultivation and topography or by setting up intermediate environments. Yet, not all human endeavours are successful, which leads us to analyse the failures of individual as well as collective confrontation with hostile environments: depopulated land, decimated armies, missed shipments.