The Fathers of Epidemiology and their Contributions (Essay Sample)

Epidemiology
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December 15, 2020
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the science concerned with the relationship between health diseases with other health related factors that affects the human population. It is therefore referred to as the basic science of public health and community based clinical practice (Detels, n.d.). Different epidemiologists have different definitions of epidemiology but use information to influence public policy. The main goal of epidemiology is to determine the causal factors for health related issues so as to improve the health of people. There exist different types of epidemiology such as descriptive, analytical and experimental epidemiology. Descriptive epidemiology is concerned with characteristics of distribution of diseases in relation with place, time and people. Analytical epidemiology makes statistical conclusions about what causes diseases based on the collected samples while the experimental epidemiology deals with conducting experiments to determine the relationship after observations ("Epidemiology and Public Health | Boundless Microbiology", n.d.). In health care organizations, the epidemiological methods are applied by public health workers to determine the risk factors which is used to come up with the best disease control measures. The research activities involved in epidemiology has provided foundation for practical and ensuring effective public health actions are carried out. For centuries now, ever since the 4th century, different people have contributed to the evolution and contemporary community based public heath practice.
Hippocrates (460-370 BC) was a popular physician who was involved in investigating the rational behavior portrayed by a famous philosopher Democritus in Abdera city of the Greek. It was discovered that Democritus was experiencing melancholy episodes and was therefore considered to be rational. This was an example of clinical psychology. Hippocrates tried to combine the existing philosophical concepts of Philistion, Empedocles and Diogenes to form a group of documents known as the Hippocratic Corpus (Miner, 2015). It consisted of guides to diagnoses of the brain, blood, liver, heart and lungs with the recommended treatment. Hippocrates studied the causes of diseases and ways of preventing these diseases. He ruled out that the rate in which the diseases affected the human population totally depended on the way they lived, the food they ate and the environment they lived on.
The Hippocratic corpus also consisted of writing on obstetrics, ophthalmology, gynecology, veins and the bones. Hippocrates ruled out that psychopathology originated from the brain and that the brain was the basis of the mind (Peedicayil & Yasui, 2017) by studying epilepsy. All his recorded data shows that he also performed surgery. He was able to transform medicine into a discipline that could be studied and that disease were not as a cause of magic and superstitions. Today, Hippocrates’ research, diagnoses, findings and treatments are used in the medical field. He believed that it was important to give the body time to try and heal itself before administering any medication and if it failed, then it was necessary to use the medicine (Adhikari, 2019). In addition, medical students swear the Hippocratic oath proposed by the Hippocrates himself. The oath has rules which are to be followed and emphasizes the doctors to avoid malpractices. Indeed, Hippocrates is the father of modern medicine.
Galen (129-210 AD) was a Greek physician and a philosopher. He began studying medicine at the age of 16 in Egypt. Galen acquired the rich and famous patients who were diagnosed with incurable diseases by other physicians in Rome. He conducted anatomical experiments and dissections on monkeys, sheep, goats and pigs (Nutton, n.d.). For more than 400 years in medicine, it was taught that the arteries and veins had air. Galen was able to clarify that instead, it carried blood. He studies the arteries and the veins and was able to establish the structural differences between the two blood vessels and also discovered the valves of the heart together with the seven pairs of cranial