Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns

and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population.

It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk
factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. Epidemiologists help with study design, collection,
and statistical analysis of data, amend interpretation and dissemination of results (including peer review and
occasional systematic review). Epidemiology has helped develop methodology used in clinical research, public
health studies, and, to a lesser extent, basic research in the biological sciences.[1]

Major areas of epidemiological study include disease causation, transmission, outbreak investigation, disease
surveillance, environmental epidemiology, forensic epidemiology, occupational
epidemiology, screening, biomonitoring, and comparisons of treatment effects such as in clinical trials.
Epidemiologists rely on other scientific disciplines like biology to better understand disease
processes, statistics to make efficient use of the data and draw appropriate conclusions, social sciences to
better understand proximate and distal causes, and engineering for exposure assessment.

Epidemiology, literally meaning "the study of what is upon the people", is derived from Greek epi 'upon,
among' demos 'people, district' and logos 'study, word, discourse', suggesting that it applies only to human
populations. However, the term is widely used in studies of zoological populations (veterinary epidemiology),
although the term "epizoology" is available, and it has also been applied to studies of plant populations
(botanical or plant disease epidemiology).[2]

The distinction between "epidemic" and "endemic" was first drawn by Hippocrates,[3] to distinguish between
diseases that are "visited upon" a population (epidemic) from those that "reside within" a population (endemic).
[4]
The term "epidemiology" appears to have first been used to describe the study of epidemics in 1802 by the
Spanish physician Joaquín de Villalba [es] in Epidemiología Española.[4] Epidemiologists also study the
interaction of diseases in a population, a condition known as a syndemic.

The term epidemiology is now widely applied to cover the description and causation of not only epidemic,
infectious disease, but of disease in general, including related conditions. Some examples of topics examined
through epidemiology include as high blood pressure, mental illness and obesity. Therefore, this epidemiology
is based upon how the pattern of the disease causes change in the function of human beings.

History
[edit]

The Greek physician Hippocrates, taught by Democritus, was known as the father of medicine,[5][6] sought a
logic to sickness; he is the first person known to have examined the relationships between the occurrence of
disease and environmental influences.[7] Hippocrates believed sickness of the human body to be caused by an
imbalance of the four humors (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm). The cure to the sickness was to
remove or add the humor in question to balance the body. This belief led to the application of bloodletting and
dieting in medicine.[8] He coined the terms endemic (for diseases usually found in some places but not in
others) and epidemic (for diseases that are seen at some times but not others).[9]

Modern era
[edit]

See also: History of emerging infectious diseases

In the middle of the 16th century, a doctor from Verona named Girolamo Fracastoro was the first to propose a
theory that the very small, unseeable, particles that cause disease were alive. They were considered to be able
to spread by air, multiply by themselves and to be destroyable by fire. In this way he refuted Galen's miasma
theory (poison gas in sick people). In 1543 he wrote a book De contagione et contagiosis morbis, in which he
was the first to promote personal and environmental hygiene to prevent disease. The development of a
sufficiently powerful microscope by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1675 provided visual evidence of living
particles consistent with a germ theory of disease.[citation needed]

During the Ming dynasty, Wu Youke (1582–1652) developed the idea that some diseases were caused by
transmissible agents, which he called Li Qi (戾气 or pestilential factors) when he observed various epidemics
rage around him between 1641 and 1644.[10] His book Wen Yi Lun (瘟疫论, Treatise on Pestilence/Treatise of
Epidemic Diseases) can be regarded as the main etiological work that brought forward the concept.[11] His
concepts were still being considered in analysing SARS outbreak by WHO in 2004 in the context of traditional
Chinese medicine.[12]

Another pioneer, Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689), was the first to distinguish the fevers of Londoners in the
later 1600s. His theories on cures of fevers met with much resistance from traditional physicians at the time. He
was not able to find the initial cause of the smallpox fever he researched and treated.[8]

John Graunt, a haberdasher and amateur statistician, published Natural and Political Observations ... upon the
Bills of Mortality in 1662. In it, he analysed the mortality rolls in London before the Great Plague, presented one
of the first life tables, and reported time trends for many diseases, new and old. He provided statistical
evidence for many theories on disease, and also refuted some widespread ideas on them.[citation needed]

Original map by John Snow showing

John Snow is famous for his investigations into the causes of the 19th-century cholera epidemics, and is also
known as the father of (modern) Epidemiology.[13][14] He began with noticing the significantly higher death rates in
two areas supplied by Southwark Company. His identification of the Broad Street pump as the cause of the
Soho epidemic is considered the classic example of epidemiology. Snow used chlorine in an attempt to clean
the water and removed the handle; this ended the outbreak. This has been perceived as a major event in the
history of public health and regarded as the founding event of the science of epidemiology, having helped
shape public health policies around the world.[15][16] However, Snow's research and prev