Epidemiology

Epidemiology (the word derives from the Greek words "epidemos" and "logos," meaning "study of epidemics") is the study of the frequency and distribution of illness, and the parameters and the risk factors that define the state of health of a population, in relation to time, space and groups of individuals.

HISTORY

Epidemiology originated in the seventeenth century, when Petty, William (1623-1687), an English doctor, economist and scientist, collected information on the population, which he described in the work Political Arithmetic. Graunt, John (1620-1694) proposed the first rigorous analysis of causes of death in 1662. Quetelet, Adolphe (1796-1874), Belgian astronomer and mathematician, is considered to be the foundor of modern population statistics, the mother discipline of epidemiology, statistics, econometrics and other quantitative disciplines describing social and biological characteristics of human life. With the work of Farr, William (1807-1883), epidemiology