For at least a century, and perhaps much longer, autopsy pathology has been a fitting introduction to the study of clinical medicine, and in like manner one might now say that social pathology becomes a fitting introduction to the study of social medicine and the whole list of disciplines it may include. Similarly geographical pathology may become a fitting introduction to the study of world me...

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 t...