Emerging Infectious Diseases ─ Art in Science

Since 1995, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published Emerging Infectious Diseases, a public health journal that endeavors to improve scientific understanding of disease emergence, prevention, and elimination.

Widely known for its leading research in infectious disease, EID is also recognized for its unique aesthetic, which brings together visual art from across periods and, through prose, makes it relatable to the journal's science-minded readership.

In Art in Science: Selections from Emerging Infectious Diseases, the journal's highly popular fine-art covers are contextualized with essays that address how the featured art relates to science, and to us all. Through the combined covers and essays, the journal's contents -- topics such as infections, contagions, disease emergence, antimicrobial resistance -- find larger context amid topics such as poverty and war, the hazards of global travel, natural disasters, and human-animal interactions.

This collection of 92 excerpts and covers from Emerging Infectious Diseases will be of interest to readers of the journal or to anyone who wishes to reach across the aisle between art and science.

Polyxeni Potter, MA, ELS, is Managing Senior Editor of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. She was educated in literature and the arts and has a formidable grasp of the mechanics of language, rooted in her knowledge of Greek and Latin. She brought these skills to CDC two decades ago, and since then she has forged the humanities and science bond at the heart of this book.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta.