Uses of epidemiology, ways of living and dying
International Journal of Epidemiology - Volume 36, Number 6 December 2007
Shah Ebrahim
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2007 36: 1159-1160; doi:10.1093/ije/dym241
“…….For me, the remarkable thing about Morris's ‘Uses’ is the direct engagement with public health and clinical medicine with examples that, although 50 years old, feel remarkably fresh in the insight they give and the questions they provoke. Epidemiology for Morris is a method ‘for finding things out, of asking questions, and of getting answers that raise further questions’. The increasing retreat of epidemiology from a contextualized view of itself to a decontextualized science of causation–as characterized by Nancy Krieger2 in her thoughtful reflection on epidemiology as history, as population science, and as pragmatic and contextual—loses several of the ‘Uses’, and with them opportunities for improving population health.
Ann Oakley, the daughter of Richard Titmuss—a long-standing collaborator with Morris—highlights the other post-Second World War flowerings of the social medicine project 3. In contrast, Dorothy Porter, traces the theoretical basis of his view of epidemiology from the Enlightenment rationalism to the ‘institutionalization of probabilistic thought’ into a post-Second World War political positivism, and defines his work as ‘late-modernist epidemiology’ because of its application of statistical modernism to health in an era of late-industrial capitalism…..” (au)
N Morris
Uses of epidemiology
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2007 36: 1165-1172; doi:10.1093/ije/dym227
Nancy Krieger
Commentary: Ways of asking and ways of living:
reflections on the 50th anniversary of Morris’ ever-useful Uses of Epidemiology
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2007 36: 1173-1180; doi:10.1093/ije/dym228
‘Epidemiology is the only way of asking some questions in medicine, one way of asking others (and no way at all to ask many).’
Jeremy M. Morris - Uses of Epidemiology (1957, p. 96)1
“……To be of use. To Jeremy Morris (b. 1910), writing a half-century ago in his now classic text, Uses of Epidemiology,1 the promise—and responsibility—of epidemiology was clear: to generate scientific knowledge about the ‘presence, nature and distribution of health and disease among the population’ (p. 96),1 ultimately in order to ‘abolish the clinical picture’(p. 98).1 Committed to improving the ‘health of the community’ (p. 96),1Morris argued that ‘one of the most urgent social needs of the day’ that epidemiology could address was ‘identifying harmful ways of living’ and ‘rules of healthy living’ (p. 98).1 Uniquely equipping epidemiology to carry out this task was, in his view, its population and historical perspective and
Dorothy Porter
Calculating health and social change: an essay on Jerry Morris and Late-modernist epidemiology
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2007 36: 1180-1184; doi:10.1093/ije/dym229
Ann Oakley
Fifty years of JN Morris's Uses of Epidemiology
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2007 36: 1184-1185; doi:10.1093/ije/dym230
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