What is epidemiology?

ep·i·de·mi·ol·o·gy

Pronunciation: ĕp'ĭ-dē'mē-ŏl'ə-jē, -dĕm'ē-

Function: noun

Etymology: Late Latin epidemia + International Scientific Vocabulary -logy

1. The Greek physician Hippocrates (~400 BC) was the first physician systmatically examined the relation of envirnomental factors and risk of a disease; he coined two terms ‘endemic’ and ‘epidemic’.
2. a branch of medical science that deals with the incidence, distribution, and control of disease in a population.
3. the sum of the factors controlling the presence or absence of a disease or pathogen.
4. Hirsch (1883): science of the distribution of diseases of mankind.
5. Frost (1927): the science of the mass-phenomena of infectious disease, or as the natural history of infectious disease; - conscerned not merely with describing the distribution of disease, but equally or more fitting into a consistent philosophy.
6. Greenwood (1934): the study of disease as a mass phenomenon.
7. Frost (1936): epidemiology at any given time is something more than the total of its established factors. It includes their orderly arrangement into chains of inference which extend more or less beyond the bounds of direct observation.
8. Maxcy (1951): ...relationships of the various factors and conditions which determine the frequencies and distribution of an infectious process, a disease or a physiologic state in a human community.
9. Leavell & Clark (1958): factors influencing distribution of health, disease, disorder, death.
10. MacMahon B (1960): the study of the distribution and determinants of disease prevalence in man.
11. Lilienfeld AM (1985): the study of the distribution of a disease or condition in a population and of those factors which influence their distribution.

Epidemiology from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology