ABSTRACT
At an individual level, we are used to observing time-dependent changes such as ageing in ourselves and in people close to us. Diseases occurring in childhood are predominantly infections and congenital malformations. With increasing age, degenerative processes and malignant neoplasms become more dominating causes of ill-health in people living in industrial countries. What we tend to forget is that changes in our living environment during the average life time typical for the industrial world-over 70 years-are often equally substantial. Although some of the changes in the living environment can draw much attention (such as the nuclear accident at Chernobyl) most changes develop gradually and remain largely unnoticed. When an individual becomes ill, in most cases the modern health care system focuses on the individual, with little interest in establishing epidemiologically important aetiological factors, some of which may be distant both in terms of time and location. Yet understanding the individual’s time-space history can provide important information not only for the epidemiologist, but also for the clinician.
