A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological and Practical, on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America: As They Appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian, and Esquimaux Varieties of Its Population

Daniel Drake. A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological and Practical, on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America: As They Appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian, and Esquimaux Varieties of Its Population. New York: W.B. Smith & Co., 1850.

Before the advent of the germ theory of disease, medical doctors often attributed illness to variations in local geography. One popular theory, among several, was that swamps produced a “miasma,” or poison gas, causing malaria. In this book, the physician Daniel Drake (1785-1852) took a methodical approach to the etiology of diseases like malaria. By carefully evaluating the relationships between different populations, geographies, and these diseases, Drake came to the conclusion that swamp gases were insufficient to cause malaria. Instead, his conclusions supported the “vegeto-animalcular hypothesis,” or the idea that small, unseen insects were transmitting disease from the environment to people, or from people to each other.

Although not all of his conclusions would be borne out, Drake’s writings and comprehensive systematic approach became an important precursor to the work of later scientists such as Pasteur and Koch. He was moreover, the first publish detailed maps of North America in support of what we would think of today as disease ecology.