Nearly all the great disease outbreaks in history have inspired a common response, regardless of the apparent medical realities, says UC Davis historian Catherine Kudlick. In an epidemic tradition as old as civilization itself, she says, people respond to disease outbreaks by denying the existence of a threat, fleeing the infected area, finding scapegoats and inventing conspiracy theories. During two post-revolutionary cholera outbreaks in Paris in 1832 and 1849, for example, the cocky, recently empowered middle class briefly bolstered their false sense of security by identifying the water-borne disease with the poor. This provoked, in turn, a series of grisly riots among angry members of the lower classes, who saw cholera as a plot by doctors and government officials to assassinate them. Kudlick sees similar patterns with AIDS -- an initial sluggish response by doctors and government officials, blame on unpopular groups and persistent rumors that the disease sprang from failed germ warfare experiments. But Kudlick finds an unprecedented lesson in how many of the first victims, gay men, asserted control, joining with doctors and government officials in defining the disease image and medical expectations. Kudlick explores how society shapes medical responses to epidemics in her new book, "Cholera in Post-Revolutionary Paris" (UC Press), and in an upcoming article in the Dutch medical journal Odyssey.