Wilderness Drum > Wilderness Books > Medicine > Infectious Disease

We are by nature creatures of faith, as perhaps all creatures are; we all live by counting on things that cannot be proved. As creatures of faith, we must choose either to be religious or to be superstitious, to believe in things that cannot be proved or to believe in things that can be disproved. The present age is an age of superstition, and some of our shallowest superstitions have the authorization of our hardest-headed rationalists and realists. The modern ambition to control nature, for instance, is an ambition based foursquare on a superstition: the idea that what we take nature to be is what nature is, or that nature is that to which it can be reduced. If nature is to be controlled, then it has to be reduced to that which is theoretically controllable. It must be understood as a machine or as the sum of its known, separable, and decipherable parts.

— Wendell Berry

Now what else could go wrong in the wilderness? Oh yes – Lyme disease, giardiasis, diarrhea, hookworm, rabies, plague, and South American trypanosomiasis. After years during which we prematurely congratulated ourselves on how clever we were, infectious diseases have made a dramatic resurgence – among other reasons, because of our over-reliance on antibiotics. The following texts include general introductions and manuals on infectious and parasitic disease, as well as specific ailments, such as Lyme disease, Hanta virus. and other animal-borne infections. The section also includes a number of texts on tropical medicine, where infectious and parasitic diseases are the primary threat to human beings – right up there with human cruelty itself. But remember that, in the tropics, a good latrine is worth a dozen doctors; see the section on Village Health and Sanitation.

Alan G. Barbour, Lyme Disease: The Cause, the Cure, the Controversy (Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), ISBN 0-8018-5245-5.  This is a thorough discussion of Lyme disease for a lay audience by a physician who specializes in insect-borne diseases. The book has been controversial, because it takes a very conservative approach to diagnosis, angering people who believe – rightly or wrongly – that they have been mistreated by the medical system. But the book explains why the diagnosis might be problematic and what the sources of difficulty have been. The book covers the nature of the illness, initial problems with its medical recognition, ecology, symptoms, laboratory tests, treatment, and prevention.

Dion R. Bell, Lecture Notes On Tropical Medicine (Oxford UK: Blackwell Science Ltd, 1995), ISBN 0-632-03839-X.  There are a number of books available on tropical medicine, but this one is thorough, concise, well written, and inexpensive. It is helpful reading before your next jungle survival trip, and handy enough to keep around if you find yourself in a long-term tropical living situation. The book covers the entire gamut of tropical diseases, from leishmaniasis and trypanosomiasis to cholera, from hookworm to tapeworm, flukes to leprosy. It is very clearly laid out but with virtually no illustrations. Thus, a good companion volume would be Wallace Peters’ extremely well illustrated Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, discussed below.

Abram S. Benenson, Control Of Communicable Diseases Manual (Washington DC: American Public Health Association, 1995), ISBN 0-87553-222-5. This is a very handy little reference book on just about every communicable disease, common or uncommon, that you might ever encounter, along with measures that can be taken for treatment and control. A good companion volume is Ronald Emond’s Color Atlas of Infectious Diseases, discussed below.

Kevin Cahill, et al., Tropical Medicine: A Clinical Text (Darien CT: LeJacq Communications, 2002), ISBN 1-92966-007-3. This is a compact guide to tropical diseases, written for medical students and for physicians either going to practice in the tropics, or whose home practice includes people from the tropics. Chapters cover all of the important tropical diseases – malaria, trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis, amoebiasis, bacterial and rickettsial diseases, leprosy, fungal infections, helminth infections, and malnutrition. Each chapter contains sections on parasite and vector, where appropriate, and pathology, clinical features, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. The discussion is clear and straightforward, but the book is poorly illustrated with sparse black-and-white photographs. As a reference text, it might usefully be paired with Wallace Peters’ extremely well illustrated Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, discussed below.

E. Lendell Cockrum, Rabies, Lyme Disease, Hanta Virus and Other Animal-Borne Diseases in the United States and Canada (Tucson AZ: Fisher Books, 1997), ISBN 1-55561-138-9. The author of this book is a zoologist, rather than a virologist or expert in infectious disease, which may explain its perspective, and its unfortunately somewhat misleading title. The book is a quick overview of animal-borne viruses of all kinds. The discussion of the illnesses and their pathogens is a helpful review but relatively superficial. The bulk of the book consists of photographs, drawings, distribution maps, and descriptions of all the species of bats, rodents, and rabbits in the United States and Canada that are believed to carry and transmit viruses than can affect humans.

Roger Drummond, Ticks and What You Can Do About Them (Berkeley CA: Wilderness, Press, 1990) (with 1992 update insert), ISBN 0-89997-116-4. Just what the title says. This tiny little booklet is 65 pages of information about ticks and the diseases they carry, including the best ways to prevent them and detach them. Chapters cover the ecology and life cycle of ticks, medically important species of ticks, personal protection, tick removal, and the key diseases caused by ticks – Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, tick paralysis. It also discusses area control with insecticides and other tick control methods.

Bruce F. Eldridge, Medical Entomology: A Textbook on Public Health and Veterinary Problems Caused by Arthropods (Dordrecht NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), ISBN 0792363213. This book is designed primarily as a textbook for graduate and postgraduate courses in medical, public health, and veterinary entomology, but with a focus on diseases instead of arthropods. It includes general discussions of epidemiology, transmission, disease control, vector control, and disease surveillance, as well as chapters on the specific arthropod-borne diseases, and what it calls direct injury by insects – phobias, psychoses, annoyance, allergies, toxins, venoms, and myiasis.

Ronald T. D. Emond, et al., Color Atlas of Infectious Diseases (St. Louis MO: Mosby-Year Book, 1995), ISBN 0-723421-27-7. This book is filled with color pictures of the most common – and most of the uncommon – infectious illnesses. For those who do not have daily practical experience in an infectious disease ward, this book, like Wallace Peters’ Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, discussed below, at least lets you see what the diseases look like before you have to deal with them. This is a good companion volume to Abram Benenson’s Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, discussed above.

Denise V. Lang, Coping with Lyme Disease: A Practical Guide to Dealing with Diagnosis and Treatment (Henry Holt, 1997), ISBN 0-805047-75-1. This is the revised edition of a pioneering book on what, at the time, was a little-known and underdiagnosed illness. This update presents the latest findings about the symptoms and effects of Lyme disease, current methods of diagnostic testing and methods of treatment, and explores the role that diet, nutrition, and gender play in catching the disease. An updated appendix provides new material on publications, foundations, and support groups.

Bernard E. Matthews, An Introduction to Parasitology (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ISBN 0-521-57691-1. Once we move beyond the embrace of modern civilization, some of the greatest threats to human well-being are infections either caused or carried by parasites – protozoa, flatworms, nematodes, flukes, lice, ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, and flies. This book is a general comparative introduction to parasites, their life cycles, and their control. It is an excellent place to start in trying to understand the ecology, life cycles, and epidemiology of parasites generally.

Robert G. Nixon, Communicable Diseases and Infection Control for EMS (Upper Saddle River NJ: Brady, 2000), ISBN 0-13-084384-9. A relatively brief but comprehensive basic text, covering the fundamentals of the immune system, childhood infectious diseases, food poisoning, HIV and the hepatitis viruses, and infection control programs, all from the point of view of the provider of emergency medical services. Highly recommended.

Wallace Peters, et al., Tropical Medicine and Parasitology (London UK: Mosby Wolfe, 1995), ISBN 0-7234-2069-6.  This is a color atlas of just about every tropical disease and parasitological infection you can think of, with hundreds of color pictures – a good companion to reference texts on tropical medicine, which often are poorly illustrated.  These are the diseases you might encounter in a long-term jungle survival situation, and it helps to know what they can look like.

Daniel W. Rahn, et al., Lyme Disease (New York, NY: American College of Physicians, 1998), ISBN 0-94312-658-4. This is an outstanding monograph produced by two editors and a diverse group of physicians with expertise in Lyme disease; in fact, several are the acknowledged experts in various niches of this at times enigmatic and highly politicized infectious disease. The book is intended as a single and all-encompassing source of information for readers interested in Lyme disease. Includes concise descriptions of the clinical evidence of Lyme disease as well as brief case studies. Very highly recommended.

Karen Vanderhoof-Forschner, et al., Everything You Need To Know About Lyme Disease and Other Tick-Borne Disorders (New York NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), ISBN 0-471160-61-X. The author of this book, written for a non-medical audience, has personal experience with Lyme disease and is the founder of the Lyme Disease Foundation. The book emphasizes the difficulty of confirming diagnosis, and presents the various symptoms and the tests available for determining Lyme disease, as well as other tick-borne infections such as ehrlichiosis and babesiosis.

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