In 1848, the Prussian government asked the young German pathologist, Rudolf Virchow, to investigate the typhus outbreak in Upper Silesia, presently in Poland.[1] His observations on the epidemic brought about a paradigm shift in understanding human disease at the population level. Beyond the narrow concept of bacteria and infections, as causes of disease in populations, Virchow studied the importance of the social and economic conditions prevailing in Upper Silesia such as poverty, poor civil services, ignorance, illiteracy, and other socioeconomic predicaments. These findings made him realize that if these challenges, all of which called for political action, were addressed, such epidemics would not recur.
The remedies for population health were education, employment, a functional government, and investment in agriculture. Virchow summed up famously, “Medicine is a social science and…
