ABSTRACT
John Snow’s status among modern epidemiology has reached almost mythic proportions, and although it is true that he demonstrated cholera to be a waterborne disease, his theory was not widely held in his own time. The notion that clues to the cause of disease might come from observing who got what, when, and where – in other words, from the study of the epidemiology of disease – was a Johnny-come-lately to the medical party. The microscope ushered in developments in medical thought; Rudolf Virchow proposed the cellular theory of pathology, and his younger contemporary Robert Koch did much to propagate the bacterial aetiology of disease, most particularly through the discovery of the tubercle bacillus and the adumbration of his postulates. One of the most interesting aspects of palaeopathology is the process of determining the way in which the frequency of disease has changed over time and in different parts of the world.
