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International Journal of Epidemiology 2003;32:341-343
© International Epidemiological Association 2003

Reprints and Reflections

Commentary: Snow on rickets

Nigel Paneth

College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, Department of Epidemiology, Suite 600, 4660 S Hagadorn Road, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA. E-mail: paneth@msu.edu

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

John Snow’s little piece on rickets,1 written less than a year before his death, illustrates in miniature the integrative thought processes that made him a founding figure of both epidemiology and scientific anaesthesiology. Snow was one of those rare medical scientists who move effortlessly across conceptual categories usually kept distinct. In studying cholera, anaesthesia, and rickets, he investigated the distribution of molecules in solution and the distribution of diseases in populations. Snow’s great contribution to epidemiology—unravelling the mode of transmission of cholera decades before germ theory—was an exercise in the blending of ideas operating at molecular, pathological, clinical, and epidemiological levels. His understanding of molecular forces in living things led him to hypothesize a minuscule, reproducing agent of disease. His view of the intestinal nature of cholera pathophysiology led him . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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