Abstract
This chapter shifts focus away from any kind of totalizing explanation of infectious disease as a whole towards descriptions and discussions of significant historical moments that were shaped by the course of infectious disease. It is perhaps common to discuss human history as the annals of human triumph and tragedies, but, in the same way that it may be impossible to discuss the history of any particular region without at least some implication as to its peripheries, it may be impossible to discuss the Columbian exchange that led to the European colonization of the Americas without reference to the infectious disease that hitched rides westward towards immunologically unprepared lands, depopulating and weakening native civilizations just in time for Europeans to take advantage, to conquer, and to exploit. The infectious component of the Columbian exchange is one of the many macro- and micro-events detailed in this chapter.