RE: “EPIDEMIOLOGIC INTERACTIONS, COMPLEXITY, AND THE LONESOME DEATH OF MAX VON PETTENKOFER”

Extract

When we (the two authors of this letter) met the last time in the fall of 2006, we were discussing Max von Pettenkofer's self experimentation by ingesting a broth of cholera as we sat in the cafe “Mariandl” around the corner from Pettenkoferstreet and his Institute. One of us (M. W.) had just rescued a bibliographic biography of von Pettenkofer (1) during a library reshuffle, written by one of von Pettenkofer's successors as chair of the Munich Hygiene Institute (Karl Kisskalt, 1875–1962). Both of us were deploring our present forgetful time, which doesn't appear to honor adequately the inherent genius of either old books or epidemiologic ancestors.

The author of “Epidemiologic Interactions, Complexity, and the Lonesome Death of Max von Pettenkofer” (2) has to be thanked for proving us wrong by his revisitation of a man who regarded himself explicitly as an epidemiologist. Morabia's credit to von Pettenkofer for having presented one of the first formal descriptions of interaction in epidemiology is both a historical tribute and a challenge put before us. von Pettenkofer is credited mainly for having founded the first Institute for Hygiene in the world. It should be noted that his activities in the service of preventing disease, promoting health, and prolonging life ranged widely, from sanitation to the lighting of public places, from committee work to giving public lectures on science (his well-attended “populäre Vorlesungen”), and from statistical analyses to speaking up against the local overconsumption of alcoholic beverages. His specific hallmark was the combination of science and technology with a deeply rooted common spirit (3).