Since 2013, my task for the American Journal of Epidemiology has been to continue the regular publication of “Snippets From the Past,” a section that George Comstock carried out between 1991 and 2005. In addition, I have served as the editor of a new section of the Journal entitled “Epidemiology in History,” which is dedicated to invited and unsolicited papers (1).
SNIPPETS FROM THE PAST
Systematically scanning the content of the American Journal of Hygiene has proved to be a fruitful endeavor. In doing so, I was surprisingly able to locate in a publication from 1925 the first rigorous case-control study known to us. The study was conducted in Flint, Michigan, to trace an outbreak of scarlet fever to an ice cream factory (2). The conventional history of the age-versus-cohort analysis of disease mortality was replaced by the resurrection of the forgotten 1928 report by Bigelow and Doering, in which they interpreted the evolution of typhoid mortality in Massachusetts using cohort analysis similar but anterior to that used by Wade Hampton Frost in his famous posthumous paper on tuberculosis (3). The early volumes of the American Journal of Hygiene included many of Wade Hampton Frost's publications, allowing us to follow the evolution of his innovative ideas and methods (4). Finally, in this issue of the Journal, the pioneering work in genetic epidemiology of Read, Taussig, and Ciocco is brought back to our attention after nearly 80 years of oblivion (5).
I happen to have written all of these “Snippets From the Past,” but this does not have to remain the case. Anyone is welcome to submit a “Snippets” article to the Journal. The systematic review of epidemiology and public health journals of the 20th century still needs to be done and promises to shake our current knowledge. It is a fascinating prospect.
EPIDEMIOLOGY IN HISTORY
In this section, we have published an interview with George Comstock (6) and articles on measles (7), the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Surgeon General Report on smoking (8), Goldberger's cotton mill cohort study of 1916 (9), and whooping cough (10). Overall, we have accepted approximately 25% of submissions in this section.
The main lesson is that there is a lot more to do in the history of epidemiology. The Journal gives serious attention to your submissions and can find competent sets of reviewers. It is time to set the historical record of our discipline straight.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Author affiliations: Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment, Queens College, City University of New York, New York (Alfredo Morabia); and Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York (Alfredo Morabia).
This work was supported by grant 1G13LM010884-01A1 from the National Library of Medicine.
Conflict of interest: none declared.
REFERENCES
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