American College of Epidemiology         History of epidemiology

The population-level study of death and disease started with the Scientific Revolution of 18^th century Europe. The origins of the observational study of disease occurrence began with Dr. John Snow’s analysis of cholera epidemics in London. From this achievement, epidemiology has become a comprehensive field that combines observational methods with analytic techniques to describe the risk of disease in qualitative and quantitative terms. To explore the development of this challenging science, start with these sites:

•   UCLA's John Snow website

•   A brief history of epidemiologic methods, by Alfredo Morabia (includes links to classic papers)

•   Milestones from the Framingham Heart Study