Snippets from the past: the evolution of Wade Hampton Frost's epidemiology as viewed from the American Journal of Hygiene/Epidemiology.

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.

• Authors: Alfredo Morabia
• Journal: American journal of epidemiology (Am J Epidemiol) Vol. 178 Issue 7 Pg. 1013-9 (Oct 01 2013) ISSN: 1476-6256 [Electronic] United States
• PMID: 24022889 (Publication Type: Biography, Historical Article, Portrait, Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural)

Topics

• Baltimore
• Communicable Diseases (epidemiology, etiology, history)
• Epidemics (history)
• Epidemiologic Methods
• Epidemiology (history)
• History, 20th Century
• Humans
• Hygiene (history)
• United States (epidemiology)
• United States Public Health Service (history)