Epidemics in Small Communities

‘Epidemics in Small Communities’ develops an understanding of the ways in which an infection can achieve community circulation in small geographical areas. It begins by examining the local disease records of two doctors in general practice in the United Kingdom (William Pickles of Wensleydale and Edgar Hope-Simpson of Cirencester) to shed light on the processes whereby individual cases of diseases, such as measles and influenza, can develop into full-blown epidemics. The second half of the chapter focuses on Iceland as an island laboratory for the study of epidemic diffusion processes in the period 1902–1988. For this 87-year period, records of 131 discrete epidemic waves (with a recorded total of >0.5 million cases) of measles, influenza, and five other infectious diseases are examined in terms of wave spacing, wave velocity, and wave geography. These findings are related both to epidemiological theory and to aspects of the changing historical geography of the island.