Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: The laboring dead -- Crowded places: the roots of fresh air -- Missing persons: the decline of contagion theory and the rise of epidemiology -- Discovering epidemiology's voice: slavery, science, and the development of epidemiological methods in West Africa -- Recordkeeping: epidemiological practices in the British Empire -- Florence Nightingale: the unrecognized epidemiologist of the Crimean War and India -- The other civil war: the United States Sanitary Commission's conflicted mission -- Narrative maps: black troops, Muslim migrants, and the international cholera epidemic of 1865-6 -- "Sing, unburied, sing": slavery, Confederacy, and the practice of epidemiology -- Conclusion: From subjugation to science.

"Standard histories of medicine celebrate brilliant Westerners such as Florence Nightingale and John Snow. In this unorthodox telling, Jim Downs turns our focus to another key group of contributors: the subjugated peoples-forced into close quarters by enslavement and empire-whose bodies were the experimental matter on which medical progress relied"--