Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Epidemiology
/ˌɛpɪˌdiːmiˈɒlədʒi/noun
The study of how disease is distributed in populations and what causes those patterns.
The Greek roots
ἐπί
epí
upon, among
δῆμος
dêmos
the people
λόγος
lógos
study, account
Literally: “study of what is upon the people”
The story of the word
ἐπιδήμιος described anything going around among the people, and one of the Hippocratic treatises is titled Ἐπιδημίαι. The modern discipline took its name in the mid-nineteenth century, when the London Epidemiological Society formed in 1850 to argue about cholera. The δῆμος at its centre is the same one inside democracy and demagogue, which is why an epidemic is defined by a population rather than by a patient.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
epidemicpandemicendemicdemocracy
In a sentence
Her epidemiology training showed in the first question she asked: compared with whom?