Rudolf Virchow and Epidemiological Well-Being as an Anthropoecological Concept

Abstract

This article discusses the anthropoecological understanding of epidemiological well-being and takes steps to the genealogy of such understanding. The works of the German physician Rudolf Virchow on cultural, administrative, biological and geographical factors of a typhoid pandemic are considered as anthropoecological texts. Such an interpretation of his work makes it possible to emphasize two significant aspects of the anthropoecological understanding of epidemiological wellbeing. First, it underlines its difference from the understanding of well-being as the absence of risks, total separation of the human population from infectious agents. Secondly, the mission of a scientist and physician in realization of epidemiological well-being involves participation not only in sanitary measures, but, above all, lies in indicating ways to achieve the environmental sustainability of a certain cultural community.