Medical Geography

Medical geography is the study of the spatial aspects of disease and human health. Like almost all phenomena associated with human activity, the incidence of disease exhibits a spatial pattern. By analyzing such patterns, a causal relationship between disease and behavior, or disease and environmental factors, may be discerned. Such recognition may then be used in combating the spread of the malady, and limiting the infection rate if the disease is contagious, or lowering the incidence of the sickness if the environment or human behavior is responsible for the disease. The individual often credited with founding this subdiscipline of the field is Dr. John Snow, an English physician who treated patients suffering from cholera during a severe outbreak in London in 1854. Snow acquired data on known victims of the epidemic and used these figures to plot the number of deaths from the disease on maps of the city. He thereby determined that many of the victims lived quite close to a water pump used as a water source, located on a busy thoroughfare called Broad Street. At the time, little was known about how cholera was transferred from person to person, and Snow theorized that the source of the infection was the communal water pump. He called for authorities to shut it down, and once it was closed, the number of deaths and rate of contagion dropped abruptly. Snow had stopped a serious killer in its tracks by applying geographical techniques to the study of disease.