Medical Geography–Who Gets the Goods? More May Not Be Better

Geography can contribute to the understanding of medicine and health care. Medical geography is a research tool used to map the incidence and prevalence of diseases. It has been used by epidemiologists to identify areas where certain problems are common and other areas where these problems are absent. Although medical geography has never become a major field of study, local variations in illness rates were recognized during the fourth century BC. Hippocrates1 stressed that the healer must understand the environment in which patients live to be effective. Between 1835 and 1855, maps were used to identify where people were at risk of contracting cholera. It was recognized that tables of numbers were ineffective in communicating important information and that visual maps more clearly identified regions where attention was necessary. During the 1970s, McGlashan and Armstrong (1972) published an entire book on techniques on medical geography.