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Smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, and polio are horrible diseases that once beset Americans, but are now largely, simply, unhappy history. Yet lessons learned from confronting these past plagues inform our present struggles to understand and remedy problems like HIV/AIDS, coronary heart disease, and Ebola infection. American Plagues relates stories of encounters with epidemics over our history. The stories contain both personal accounts and lessons that aid our present understanding of health and disease. Doctors and clergy, writers and newsmen, public health institutions, and even an entire town relate their personal experiences with various outbreaks and the ways they were identified, contained, and treated. The stories are filled with ambition and accomplishment, jealousy and disappointment, public spirit and self-interest, egotism and modesty.