Harvard School of Public Health - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

Page 25 text:

Seated —Eva Salber, Kathleen Shreeve, Maureen Molloy. Standing —Ascher Segall, Theodor Abelin, Brian MacMahon, George Hutchison, Manning Feinleib, Thomas Pugh. health or disease without a consideration of the environment in which he operates, whether that be biological or physical or social environment . . . Of course, one of the fascinating things about study¬ ing disease under the various conditions it occurs is serendipity . . . We had spent several months studying an epidemic of measles. And there was this August morning, a goodly reason for a certain amount of scientific satisfaction. We were inter¬ ested in diarrheal diseases and found that it was an important contribution to a death rate from mea¬ sles which, in this village, amounted to better than eight per cent compared with the minor fraction to which one is accustomed in Boston, for exam¬ ple. Also, I had a certain amount of satisfaction be¬ cause we had been working on a procedure which I had long practiced. Namely, that if one really wants to know about health in an underdeveloped country, there is one pretty sure way to find out and that’s to go into medical history and look into what happened in the present-day developed coun¬ tries a hundred years ago... John E. Gordon After the epidemiology exam. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 21

Page 24 text:

... The relevant variables ... npwo years of experience in the control of tuber- ■ - culosis has directed my attention to the widen¬ ing gap between the development of epidemiologic knowledge and its employment to yield health benefit. Responsibility for the formulation and ex¬ ecution of control programs usually lies outside the province of epidemiology. But, I believe, epide¬ miologists of the future may play a useful role in the transformation of new knowledge into more effective methods of control. The formulation of effective methods will re¬ quire the participation of various professionals— administrators, sociologists, economists, and epide¬ miologists. To resolve a particular problem, these professionals will need to develop and share a com¬ mon language, a language which describes the in¬ teractions of the total system under study. Relevant variables will include factors such as patients’ pref¬ erences and community resources in addition to time-honored age, sex, and occupation. Hence, those epidemiologists who participate in the for¬ mulation of strategies for disease control will find useful a broad conceptual framework that will ac¬ commodate these many variables. Thus far, this framework has not been developed. I believe that within the next two decades men will begin to use sys tematically a science of values, that is, an empirically-determined system of weigh¬ ing preferences for alternative acts. Epidemiologists who participate in developing strategies for disease control may find knowledge of this science of values useful. There will be a need for a new kind of epidemiology, one that deals with problems of synthesis as well as those of analysis. Frederic Bass Frederic Bass ... You get down to basic considerations... On January 12th, Dr. John E. Gordon, Professor Emeri¬ tus of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, spoke informally about a lifetime of work in epidemiology. Excerpts from his talk are printed below. W e speak oftentimes of the epidemiologic method. I don’t know much about what the epidemiologic method is. It has no particular indi¬ viduality. I think it is nothing but the scientific method turned to a special purpose: the study of disease and injury in groups of people in its natu¬ ral environment. It is based, like scientific method in general, on Baconian principles as they were refined by Claude Bernard, and little else. What it is, of course, is the attempt to develop a sophisti¬ cated understanding of disease under a variety of conditions. But it is more than geographic pathol¬ ogy ... It is more than provincialism in approach to disease, based so many times on the idea that most great secrets about disease are found in mod¬ ern metropolitan cities. I have a great liking—I have for all my life— for the study of disease in rural populations. I like particularly the studies we made in the Arctic be¬ cause the flora is simple, the fauna is simple, and the people are simple. You get down to basic con¬ siderations. I also believe that a goodly part of the advantage of epidemiology is in the fact that there is a futility to studying the behavior of man in 20

Page 26 text:

MT CROC OS M dedicated to rhe Lomlm Water Comb P11 i S ) UVD H AS A.NO COMDK8 ANJ3 Cmim C rf J MONSTEH SOUP (umm.-nljf catipcl TH A 1KS WATER , u CoTfect Te Tf.cfr ttoM ©( th jt lorfcious .sTujp doU J out to US Smith, Kline, and French— Philadelphia Museum of Art ... The surface has hem scratched... Tn the next decade the School plans to broaden the Department of Microbiology both in its teaching and research, to include new programs in investigation of microbiologic factors in the eti¬ ology of infant mortality, congenital malforma¬ tions, cancer, mental illness and other degenerative diseases characteristic of aging. The Department will be an integral part of the Center for Preven¬ tion of Infectious Disease under the Directorship of Dr. Thomas H. Weller. Some of the reasons for the emphasis on infectious disease are indicated by the following excerpts from the Delta Omega address: Infectious agents have become prime suspects among possible causes of several serious diseases previously assumed to be non-infectious, diseases of major public health importance in the highly industrialized nations. That certain forms of cancer, mental illness and diseases of old age may prove to be preventable has been under-scored by recent discoveries. One can cite evidence such as the sim¬ ian virus which can alter human cells in tissue cul¬ ture and produce neoplasms in animals, the role of the cytomegaloviruses in causing mental retarda¬ tion, and the fatty degeneration induced by the lipovirus in human cells in continuous culture . . . the surface has been scratched, but new vistas of knowledge await the skilled scientists who are in¬ vestigating the role of infectious agents in the chronic, degenerative, and neoplastic diseases of 22 man.