clipped from health.usnews.com 12 Diseases That Altered History By Matthew Shulman Posted January 3, 2008 In his book Twelve Diseases That Changed Our World, Irwin Sherman, a professor emeritus of biology at the University of CaliforniaRiverside, describes how bacteria, parasites, and viruses have swept through cities and devastated populations, felled great leaders and thinkers, and in their wake transformed politics, public health, and economies. U.S.News & World Report spoke with Sherman about how 12 key diseases—smallpox, tuberculosis, syphilis, AIDS, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, yellow fever, two noninfectious diseases (hemophilia and porphyria), and the plant disease behind the Irish Potato Famine—have altered history. Bubonic plague is mainly a disease in rodents and fleas (Xenopsylla cheopis). (SMC Images/Getty Images)