Introduction : AIDS, public policy, and historical inquiry / Elizabeth Fee and Danial M. Fox -- Disease and social order in America : perceptions and expectations / Chalres E. Rosenberg -- Epidemics and history : ecological perspectives and social responses / Guenter B. Risse -- Quaratine and the problem of AIDS / David F. Musto -- The politics of physicians' responsibility in epidemics : a note on history / Daniel M. Fox -- The enforcement of health : the British debate / Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter -- Sin versus science : venereal disease in twentieth-century Baltimore / Elizabeth Fee -- AIDS : from social history to social policy / Allan M. Brandt -- Images of plague : infectious disease in the visual arts / Daniel M. Fox and Diane R. Karp -- AIDS, gender, and biomedical discourse : current contests for meaning / Paula A. Treichler -- In the eye of the storm : the epidemiological construction of AIDS / Gerald M. Oppenheimer -- Legitimation through disaster : AIDS and the gay movement / Dennis Altman -- AIDS and the American health polity : the history and prospects of a crisis of authority / Daniel M. Fox