Epidemiology: Disease Detectives
History
400 B.C.
Epidemiology dates back to 400 B.C. with Hippocrates, a physcian during 450 BCE to 380 BCE, who was the first person to look at the spread of diseases from a more reasonable standpoint. [Citation 22]
1662
John Graunt became the first person to publish an analysis of mortality data. This publication included the analysis of different patterns present in a population, such as birth rates, death rates (mortality rate), the occurence of diseases, differences between the rates for males and females, infant mortailty rates, difference in the rates of rural or urban areas, and rate differences in accordance to different seasons. [Citation 22]
Bill of Mortality [Citation 24]
1800
William Farr improves John Graunt's research by gathering Britain's population statistics. Many of the concepts/practices that he used to draw his conclusion became essential ideas on modern statistics. [Citation 22]
William Farr [Citation 25]
1854
John Snow, known as the "father of field epidemiology" lays down the basics for the necessary steps in a field investigation, where one starts with descriptive epidemiology, a development of a hypothesis, and finally its confirmation. A famous study he did was on the cholera outbreak in the Golden Square of London. He was able to connect factors, such as the distribution of houses or availability of water, to cholera occurence. He also related exposure and unexposed populations to each other. [Citation 22]
John Snow's Map in his famous study for cholera. [Citation 26]
1930s-1940s
Epidemiologists began to use their methods and apply it to diseases that were not infectious. An example would be environmental quality-based illnesses or health conditions. [Citation 22]
Air pollution can cause health conditions, such as asthma.
September 30, 1950
A study, conducted by Richard Doll and Bradford Hill in England and Wales, tracked the increased mortality number due to lung cancer. They used a case-control study in order to find the possible causes of the incerase in death rates due to lung cancer. A few of their ideas for possible causes include the use of tobacco and those that had a longer smoking history, were more likely to develop lung cancer than a person that smoked an average less than one cigarette per day. [Citation 28]
1985
Kary B. Mullis invented the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction), a technique that made millions of copies of DNA. [Citation 29]
An older model of the PCR machine. [Citation 30]
2002
A professor at Columbia University named Samuel K. Sia develops the mChip. The mChip or also known as "lab on a chip" is able to detect and verify certain diseases quickly. [Citation 31]
mChip [Citation 32]