Disease Detectives People

John Graunt

London haberdasher, analysis of plague mortality data, father of demography

John Snow

Father of modern (field) epidemiology, used spot maps to find source of a cholera outbreak in London

Hippocrates

Father of epidemiology. Explains disease occurrence from a rational (rather than supernatural) viewpoint. Wrote an essay “On Airs, Waters, and Places”

William Farr

Father of modern vital statistics and surveillance, landmark analysis of mortality data, systematically collected & analyzed Britain’s mortality data

Lemuel Shattuck

Published 1st report on sanitation + public health problems in Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Ignaz Semmelweis

Pioneered practice of hand washing. Discovered that the incidence of maternal childbed fever in could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinic

Edward Jenner

Father of Immunology; made smallpox vaccine w/ cowpox

James Lind

Study using control groups in studying scurvy

Louis Pasteur

Created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax. Popularized germ theory of disease

Walter Reed

Demonstrated that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes, contributing to the control of the disease in tropical regions.

Mary Mallon

Asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever, cook who spread to multiple households in the early 20th century

Florence Nightingale

Founder of modern nursing, known 4 improving sanitation in military infiltration wards (used statistical analysis to show the impact of sanitary practices), established nursing school@St. Thomas Hospital

Joseph Lister

Pioneered use of antiseptics in medical practices. The first to apply the science of Germ Theory to surgery, reduced surgical mortality rates and advanced sterile medical practices

Robert Koch

Discovered causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax (Nobel prize) Formalized standards to identify organisms w/ infect. disease, w/ Friedrich Loeffler

Bradford Hill

Modernized concept of epidemiological causation of disease (bradford hill); linked lung cancer to smoking w/ Richard Doll

John Franklin Enders

Father of modern vaccines; recieved Nobel prize for culturing Polio, also developed Measles vaccine

Jonas Salk

American researcher who created the polio vaccine

Alexander Fleming

discovered Penicillin in 1928 by accident; mold accidentally contaminated petri dish, inhibited bacteria, named it after the bacteria

Joseph Goldberger

Research linked dietary deficiencies to pellagra