ABSTRACT
Geographical variations in matters of health and disease, like temporal variations, are fundamental facts and of common interest to many scientific disciplines. Each discipline brings to bear its own concepts and methodologies in attempting to explain geographical variations so that there has been a wealth of ideas as to the nature and purpose of medical geography. Barkhuus, in an excellent history of medical geography, recognizes the early descriptions of places, such as towns, cities, districts or entire countries, written by physicians as being “medical surveys.” Geographers were chiefly concerned with environmental factors as causes of disease, especially weather and climate. The concept of environmental determinism dominated geographers’ thinking in the early part of the century forcing an emphasis on the elements of the physical environment as “factors” in “determining” geographical distributions and relations. Medical geography was stimulated by the generally increasing interest in environmental and behavioral interactions as causes of disease.
