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

Am J Epidemiol. 2013 Oct 1;178(7):1013-9. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwt199. Epub 2013 Sep 10.

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.

Publication types

  • Biography
  • Historical Article
  • Portrait
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

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