Abstract
EPIDEMIOLOGY is a fascinating subject. Much the same interest is aroused and the same scientific principles involved whether, with Lodge in 1603, we discuss an “epidemick [of plague]… common unto all people or most of them” ; or with Morgan in 1728 we discover that the mange is the “epidemical distemper” of the camels of the Algerians ; or we realize with Berkeley (1857) that it was an epidemic of Irish blight which sent the Irish to New York and New Holland during the forties of the last century ; or (more metaphorically as we nowadays think) we may disagree with John Milton (1643) that divorce is a “toleration of epidemick whordom”. Thus ‘epidemic’, soon after the word was coined, came to have a wider and a narrower meaning than the original Greek ɛπιδημoζ. Epidemiology has apparently retained this wide meaning. It is correct to discuss the epidemiology of myxomatosis in the rabbit, and when we discuss the epidemiology of Irish blight we know we are not discussing a direct attack of Phytophthora infestans on the unfortunate Irish, although perhaps there may have been an indirect attack on them by way of the potato murrain.
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BARBER, H. An Epidemic of Words. Nature 176, 750 (1955). https://doi.org/10.1038/176750b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/176750b0
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