The Geography of Life and Death: Deeper, Broader, and Much More Complex

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. The history, development dualisms, and arguments of HMG are variously but thoroughly covered in each of the final four books reviewed in this essay. A short European view is presented in the opening chapters of Akhtar and Izhar's (2010) festschrift for the Belgian medical geographer Yola Verhasselt; histories of European national developments had earlier been presented by McGlashan and Blunden (1983) in a festschrift for the British medical geographer, Andrew Learmonth. The work of Barrett (2000) on the history of the idea of medical geography before 1900 is considered definitive. Mayer's (1982, 1996, 2000) series of research position papers summarizes the scholarship of the late twentieth century. Kearns and Moon (2002) provide the most thoughtful review of the ideas and their evolution in health geography. In a tour de force, Cliff and Haggett (1988) present the accomplishments of geographers in the analytical mapping of disease. The broader history of disease cartography and geographic visualization has been thoroughly and beautifully described by Koch (2005, 2011).

2. Dubos (1901–1982), one of the most influential intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century, deserves to be read by the new generation of geographers and not just for his works (Dubos 1959, 1965, 1968) that have most influenced the study of human health. In his journey from bacteriologist (tuberculosis) to biographer (of Pasteur) to philosopher of science and humanist husbandry of the Earth, this French-born American scholar wrote more than twenty books and won almost every major prize, among them the Lasker Prize, Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, Arches of Science Award, and the Tyler (environmental) Prize. His vision of states of health or disease as an expression of success or failure in adaptively responding to challenges inspired a renaissance in the approach to studying infectious disease as well as recognition of the need for broad cultural and environmental research on human biological changes resulting from civilization, urbanization, and degradation of the environment. His New York Times obituary on 21 February 1982 particularly noted his “profound humanity and the study of man's harm to himself through environmental pollution.”