Training field epidemiologists: Alexander D. Langmuir and the epidemic intelligence service.

In 1966, both of us came to the Communicable Disease Center (now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC» as newly commissioned officers in the US Public Health Service. We were initiated into the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) and immediately were immersed in the EIS course, which facilitated our metamorphosis from bedside clinicians into enthusiastic, if inexperienced, epidemiologists. During the subsequent 2 years, one of us (W.S.) was assigned to work as a generalist in a state health department (Rhode Island) while the other (F.M.L.) had a more specialized position (bacterial diseases) at CDC. Nevertheless, both of us went repeatedly into the field on epidemiologic investigations. Somewhere along the way, we assimilated the defining concept that populations, as distinguished from individual patients, were important. As a consequence, our careers, as with those of many other EIS officers, were irrevocably changed.