A Study of the Relation of Family Income and Other Economic Factors to Pellagra Incidence in Seven Cotton-Mill Villages of South Carolina in 1916

Social-biological transitions: how does the social become biological?

“…Such processes, plausibly, contribute to social class differences in longevity, healthy life expectancy and physical fitness at older ages. The timing of the biological sequence of growth and decline needs to be seen in relation to the standard of living life cycle in which the two dominant social institutions of wage labour and nuclear family interact over the life course among the majority of individuals in industrialised countries to produce two phases of household relative affluence, in early adulthood and late middle age, and three phases of household relative hardship, in childhood, families with dependent children and old age (Falkingham & Hills, 1995;Goldberg, Wheeler & Sydenstriker, 1920;Rowntree, 1902;Townsend, 1979). In Rowntree's words: A labourer is thus in poverty and therefore underfed a) in childhood -when his constitution is being built up, b) in early middle life -when he should be in his prime, c) in old age (Rowntree 1902:170).…”

Invited Commentary: Social Mechanisms, Race, and Social Epidemiology

“…Epidemiologists still clash over their discipline's status as a socionatural science. This is a long-standing issue; the tension between the social and natural sciences within epidemiology has been a characteristic of its history, from studies of the social epidemiology of pellagra (22) to attempts to redefine public health as clinical preventive medicine during a period in which the institutional ties between medicine and public health are being reinforced (23). Therefore, the uncertain status of social epidemiology as a subdiscipline within epidemiology (24) makes it an easier target for criticisms that could be addressed to other areas of epidemiology as well.…”

History of the modern epidemiological concept of confounding

“…They implemented new techniques such as random allocation of treatment14, restriction of the study sample15, standardisation of risks and rates15 16 and exposure propensity scores 17 18. They improved the epidemiological study designs, such as retrospective cohort studies16 19 and case—control studies 17 20.…”