Midterms Part 4

• Bills of mortality


  Form of death registration
• John Graunt


  • Made a pioneering analysis of the bills of mortality in his work called "Natural and Political Observations Made Upon the Bills of Mortality"
  • This became the basis for evidence-based planning and evaluation of public health interventions
• Colonial Period


  Period of discovery of new lands, cultures and the exchange of diseases between the colonizer and colonized
• Spanish colonization


  • Brought the smallpox virus to the Americas which decimated thousands of natives
  • The new world brought the new disease syphilis which baffled European physicians
• The New World introduced new remedies to diseases in European society such as the discovery of "quinine" from a South American Quina-quina tree which became the first medicine against malaria
• Cinchona


  The tree named by Carl Linnaeus in honor of the Spanish Countess of Chinchon who brought bark from the tree when she returned to Europe from Peru
• Chinese used another type of plant called Qinghao (Artemisia annua) to cure fever and malaria, from which the chemical Artemisinin was isolated and is still being used in combination with other drugs to treat malaria
• In the 1800s, there was still little understanding about malaria, which they also referred to as "bad air"
• Charles Louis Laveran


  • A French surgeon who discovered parasites in the blood of patients suffering from symptoms of Malaria, which helped scientists start to comprehend the etiology of the disease
  • Ronald Ross discovered the malarial parasites could be transmitted by mosquitoes and patients would get infected by the parasites through mosquito bites
• Vaccination or immunization


  The biggest innovation in the field of public health, pioneered by Dr. Edward Jenner
• Dr. Edward Jenner


  • The "Father of Immunology" who discovered the vaccine against smallpox virus
  • He coined the term "vaccine" from the word "vacca" or "cow"