Medical Geography

“It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” 

Hippocrates (Click here to read whole quote)

Geomedicine is a two step process:

1. Medical Geography: investigates the impact our geographic environment has over our health, by examining the correlations between environmental factors and the incidence of disease. We use this approach to discover which nutritional deficiencies play a part in the progression of particular diseases and which environmental factors, e.g. chemicals in the atmosphere, food chain and in the water can cause toxicity in the cells of our bodies, leading to illness.

2. Orthomolecular Medicine: We use this information to design specific nutritional supplements and lifestyle recommendations to rebalance nutritional deficiencies and remove toxicity in the body.

History of Medical Geography

Medical Geography is both an ancient perspective and a new specialization. The concept of Medical Geography was first used by Hippocrates over 2400 years ago in his book “On Airs, Waters, and Places,” where he associated certain diseases with certain climates.²

Even in the very early days of the discipline, it was quickly put into practical and effective use. Perhaps one of the most well known documented cases was during the cholera outbreak in London in the mid-1800s. As more people fell ill, a London doctor, John Snow, mapped cholera mortality in the Soho district of London, showing that deaths were linked to polluted drinking water from particular pumps. After people stopped drinking water from the contaminated pumps, the number of cholera deaths dramatically decreased.¹

Map of Cholera Deaths and Locations of Water Pumps.³

Sources:

1.  http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/medicalgeograph.htm
2. Meade, Melinda S., Florin, John W., and Gesler Wilbert M. Medical Geography. The Guilford Press, 2000.   
3. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/education/ideas912/912choleraho3.html