DISEASES OF CIVILIZATION.

The article focuses on the notion of "diseases of civilization." Rising population density, consequent upon the development of specialized, labor-intensive agriculture, etc., has led the appearance of lethal diseases. In the seventeenth-century, smallpox grew in Europe and peaked in the eighteenth century. Certain new diseases like rickets, commonly associated by contemporaries with deleterious facets of urban life, also saw prominence in the seventeenth century. Plague decimated many commercial towns in the early modern era.