HISTORICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY

OBJECTIVES
Students will be able to understand the history of epidemiology and its relation to the use of epidemiology currently

The Beginnings
Good epidemiological practice and reasoning started long ago Hippocrates (460-375 BC) was perhaps the first proto epidemiologist (proto because he did not actually count anything) He recognised that both environmental and behavioral factors could affect health (see the text in the box..)

Source Wikipedia The free encyclopedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates

On airs, waters, and places

(Source : Essential Epidemiology page 10; The Internet Classics Archives : http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/airwatpl.1.1.html )

Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly, should proceed thus; in the first place to consider the seasons of the year, what effects each of them produces Then the winds, the hot, and the cold, especially such as are common to all countries, and then such as are peculiar to each locality. We must also consider the qualities of the waters ....

In the same manner, when one comes to a city to which he is a stranger, he ought to consider its situation, how it lies as to the winds and the rising of the sun, for its influence is not the same whether it lies to the north or the south, to the rising or to the setting sun. These things one ought to consider attentively, and concerning the waters which the inhabitants use, whether they be marshy and soft, or hard and running from elevated and rocky situations

and if saltish and unfit for cooking; and the ground, whether it be nakedand deficinent in water, or wooded and well watered, and whether it lies in a hollow, confined situation, or is elevated and cold; and the mode in which the inhabitants live and what are their pursuits, whether they are fond of drinking and eating to excess, and given to indolence, or are fond of exercise and labour .... (Extracted from Hippocrates of Cos, 400 BC)

The Dark Ages and Middle Ages (AD 500-1500)

The have little to say to us other than the development of causal reasoning

John Graunt (1620-1674)

The introduction of more quantitative methods in to epidemiology, and also into biology and medicine in general. His Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a Following Index and Made Upon The Bills of Mortality (1662) Featuring birth and death data

Cont
Features of birth