Abstract
THERE are few subjects which tempt ‘experts’ to write popular books so much as epidemiology; but it would be hard to name a single volume in English which has secured and maintained popularity. At first sight this seems odd; all men are interested in health and disease, the dramatic value of great epidemics is intense and the detective side of epidemiological investigation should appeal to the large reading public which reveres Dr. Thorndyke, Mr. Reginald Fortune and Lord Peter Wimsey. There are many reasons for the lack of success. The possession of a medical qualification, even clinical eminence, does not ensure expert knowledge of epidemiology, while professional esprit de corps and an urge to improve the occasion lead to a propagandist treatment. On the other hand, real ‘experts’ like Creighton (who also had the gift of literary style), will hunt hares of their own raising, and the rule Creighton adopted, namely, that whatever was believed by the majority of his medical contemporaries must be wrong, is quite as misleading as simple faith in the infallibility of ‘doctors’. Finally, the subject–matter is so vast that an attempt to cover the whole field is threatened on one side by dullness and on the other by sciolism.
Plague on Us
By Geddes Smith. Pp. viii + 365 + 10 plates. (New York: The Commonwealth Fund; London: Oxford University Press, 1941.) 16s. net.
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GREENWOOD, M. EPIDEMILOGOY FOR THE MILLION. Nature 148, 69 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148069a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148069a0