August Hirsch: as critic of, and contributor to, geographical medicine and medical geography.

Of all the nineteenth-century authors who examined the relationships between disease and geography, August Hirsch (1817-1894) was probably the most respected in his time, and is the best remembered today. During his career he was first a critic of, and then a contributor to, the literature on geographical medicine and medical geography. In the process he conceptualized the nature and scope of these fields. To evaluate his criticisms and to appreciate his contributions one should first understand the distinction between geographical medicine and medical geography and where geographical pathology fits into this framework. Geographical medicine is a subfield of medicine. As such, its focus and organization is on a medical basis, but it examines how geographical phenomena influence disease. Hirsch was primarily interested in geographical pathology. Just as pathology is a sub-section of medicine so too geographical pathology is a sub-section of geographical medicine. On the other hand medical geography is a sub-discipline of geography. Therefore, its organization, the types of questions it asks and the approaches it takes focus on themes such as place, location, area, region and their geographical inter-relationships to disease, medical care, and nutrition.' This paper is largely based on articles and books written in German and which, with one exception, have not previously been translated into English.