Work

Snippets From the Past: The Evolution of Wade Hampton Frost's Epidemiology as Viewed From the American Journal of Hygiene/Epidemiology

Year: 2013

Type: article

Abstract: Wade Hampton Frost, who was a Professor of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University from 1919 to 1938, spurred the development of epidemiologic methods. His 6 publications in the American Journal of Hygiene, which later became the American Journal of Epidemiology, comprise a 1928 Cutter lecture on a theory of epidemics, a survey-based study of tonsillectomy and immunity to Corynebacterium diphtheriae (1931), 2 papers from a longitudinal study of the incidence of minor respiratory diseases (1933 and 1935), an attack rate ratio analysis of the decline of diphtheria in Baltimore (1936), and a 1936 lecture on the age, time, and cohort analysis of tuberculosis mortality. These 6 American Journal of Hygiene /American Journal of Epidemiology papers attest that Frost's personal evolution mirrored that of the emerging "early" epidemiology: The scope of epidemiology extended beyond the study of epidemics of acute infectious diseases, and rigorous comparative study designs and their associated quantitative methods came to light.

Source: American Journal of Epidemiology

DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwt199

Author: A. Morabia

Institution: Queens College, CUNY

Language: English

Topic: Historical and modern epidemiology studies

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: U.S. National Library of Medicine

Award: History of Epidemiology: Evolution and Contribution to Medicine and Public Health