title: John Hutchinson, 1811-1861: the first respiratory disease epidemiologist.
abstract: In 1844, before a large medical audience in London, John Hutchinson demonstrated the use of measurements of pulmonary function to predict disease. In contrast to standard practice at that time, he conducted an epidemiological investigation that would have been acceptable by today's standards, in which he examined over 2000 people and contrasted healthy and diseased cases. His data clearly indicated how, what he called, "vital capacity" predicted disease. Exploring the history of this young Victorian-era physician is both humbling and instructive for the modern epidemiologist, who has the advantages of the successes of ever more rapid, computer-based, technical approaches to evaluate existing data sources, and fewer opportunities to actually collect primary data from large number of patients using physiologic tools.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Channing Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. frank.speizer@channing.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Frank E
authors.initials: FE
authors.lastname: Speizer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004813:Epidemiology / Q000266:history*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D012140:Respiratory Tract Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000266:history; D006113:United Kingdom