Introduction
European countries recorded the 17th century as undoubtedly dangerous due to pestilential epidemics occurrence at the time. The Great Plague of London is one of the notable pandemics, which occurred from 1665 to 1666 (“John Graunt,” 2020). The plague affected many people as it happened in the spring and summer of 1665. It led to the deaths of about 100,000 people, most of who were London residents.
At the time, London was anticipated to be about 448 acres of land surrounded by a city wall. Maintaining proper hygiene was difficult due to congestion, as well as open sewage. The residents were also subject to poor sanitation and reckless disposal of rubbish (“John Graunt,” 2020). The below-average living conditions instigated shanties’ formation while rats started inhabiting the structures. In 1894, Alexandre Yersin identified the pandemic’s cause to be a bacterial agent Yersinia pestis, from the rat fleas (“John Graunt,” 2020). The continued exploration of the factors, as well as agents, leading to the spread of pandemics led to a quantitative and qualitative examination and the development of immunization to reduce infections.
John Graunt composed a book, namely Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality, combining the Bills of Mortality data. His quantitative publication demonstrated birth and disease incident patterns, differences between males and females, and newborn death rates (“John Graunt,” 2020). He also reviewed the insufficiencies of the data, including geographical inconsistencies, from which the calculations were derived.
Some of the notable challenges included unbalanced intervals between recordings, lack of thoroughness, erroneous age approximations, and an indefinite disease categorization. These factors are used in evaluating important data in the present day. Other than statistical scrutiny, which led to public health development, John’s work was important in establishing principles for epidemiology and demography (“John Graunt,” 2020). He was among the pioneers for deriving patterns from a disease occurrence in a geographical area or based on sex.
John Snow
John Snow (1813 – 1858), a renowned English physician, is remembered for his extensive study of Cholera. His work entailed probing into London’s Broad Street pump outbreak of malady, which happened in 1854 (Frerichs, 2020). His work was dubbed the “Grand experiment” to compare two regions in a city reported with waterborne cholera cases. One of the regions was getting fairly safe water, while the other was supplied with sewage-contaminated water.
In the 1854 outbreak at the Broad Street pump in London, Snow demonstrated that the ongoing cholera outbreak was a result of contaminated water from the pump. At the time, the epidemic had claimed several lives in the SoHo neighborhood (Frerichs, 2020). In the same year, in his “Grand Experiment” study, Snow compared London communities that received water supply from two companies.
One company used water upstream of the River Thames, which was relatively safe from urban pollution. In contrast, the second firm largely used water from other London inlets (“Location of Water, “n.d.). Using this information, he developed the harmful effect of contaminated water and proposed interventions. The “Grand Experiment” was not exactly a true experiment, as Snow had not allocated two study groups for the process (“Location of Water, “n.d.). He instead took advantage of the natural settings, which had provided room for two distinct study scenarios. He used the classical epidemiological design of exposure and disease presence to analyze his data and draw relevant conclusions.
During this period, a notion had been spread that the intake of contaminated air transmitted Cholera. On the contrary, Snow stated that a microbe-like agent was causing Cholera, a concept that was later substantiated in the 1880s when the causative agent, Vibrio cholera, was characterized. His works were published in his book On the Mode of Communication of Cholera in 1855 and later republished as an epidemiological piece, which would later bolster his recognition in the field of epidemiology (Frerichs, 2020). His book explains in detail the results of his quantitative epidemiological study, and the inferences therein that have been used to shape modern practice.
Edward Jenner
Out of every ten inhabitants, three who were infected by smallpox passed away. One of the methods used to control smallpox was a procedure called variolation. Material from smallpox sores was provided for people who had never had the illness (“History of Smallpox,” 2016). They would then be scratched on the arm or made to inhale. Some of the people subjected to the variolation conditions had fever or rashes, but only a few died. The number of deaths as a result of the curative mechanism was significantly lower than the one caused by the illness.
Immunization is based on the findings of Dr. Edward Jenner, who established that variolation had positive outcomes, especially if administered to milkmaids who had at one time contracted cowpox. He experimented with a substance from an open patch on the maid’s hand and introduced it into a boy’s arm (“History of Smallpox,” 2016). Edward then exposed the boy several times to the variola virus, but he was never infected. After several tests, in 1801 he published his work “On the Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation.” He showed optimism concerning the eradication of smallpox. Consequently, immunization was acknowledged and replaced the art of variolation (“History of Smallpox,” 2016). Almost two centuries afterward, the World Health Assembly affirmed smallpox eradication, a feat measured to be one of the biggest international public health achievements.
Dr. Jenner’s effort is largely regarded as the foundation of immunology, which started with a hypothesis formulated by an epidemiologic observation; he and others who used the same method by counting and comparing smallpox cases in cowpox vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals discovered a lower percentage of smallpox disease in cowpox vaccinated individuals, demonstrating the usefulness of the vaccine (“History of Smallpox,” 2016). Although the field of epidemiology had not been discovered, Jenner and those who adopted his findings were practicing it by collecting and scrutinizing data to ascertain the efficiency of the procedure for vaccination.
Application of the Epidemiological Methods to Current Public Health Issues
One of the current public health issues that the world is facing is Lung Cancer. Literature research is being used to provide a basis for identifying and shortening key reports on people’s behaviors concerning lung cancer risk, including smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products (Dubey, Gupta, & Jain, 2016). For the arithmetic study, prevalence and death, as well as endurance rates, are being used to better identify the grave condition of lung cancer (Dubey et al., 2016). These study patterns and approaches are founded on earlier inferences for collecting and interpreting large data sets, as well as producing reports.
References
Dubey, A., Gupta, U., & Jain, S. (2016). Epidemiology of lung cancer and approaches for its prediction: A systematic review and analysis.Chinese Journal of Cancer, 35(1). Web.
Frerichs, R. (2020). John Snow | British physician. Web.
History of smallpox. (2016) Web.
John Graunt (2020). Web.
Location of water companies. (n.d.) Web.