Daniel Drake's medical geography

Abstract

Daniel Drake's two volume study, Principal Diseases of the Interior of North America (1850-1854), is examined in the context of the medical geographical and geographical medical literature of the period. His work covers an in-depth examination of the-geography of the interior of the continent as it relates to disease occurrence. Drake's contribution appears to have occurred independently of the then contemporary European literature. Certainly in its method of research no one up to that point had developed an approach of examining, in such detail, the relationships between geography and disease over so vast an area. Drake is another example of a physician who turned to a geographical approach to better understand disease. The question arises as to what stimulated Drake into taking this approach, and what were the opinions of his study by North American and European critics? Although in the historical development of medical geography it is a major contribution, to date no medical geographer appears to have written an in depth analysis of his work.