Theoretical Epidemiology: Principles of Occurrence Research in Medicine

Abstract

For me and many of my colleagues, Miettinen's unpublished course text of the early 1970s was the first systematic introduction to theoretical epidemiology we saw; indeed, it was the only such text available (outside of some specialized infectious disease treatises) until the 1980s. This text embodied a landmark in epidemiologic thinking, if only because it synthesized so many previously disconnected theoretical developments (many of them Miettinen's) into a coherent, unitary theory. In 1981, Miettinen began writing an entirely new book, and the final finished product bears little resemblance to the 1970s text in either form or substance—although the inimitable (or inimical, depending on one's camp) Miettinen style remains intact. I suspect this new book will not be as much of a landmark as the first text, if only because the latter succeeded too well in its groundbreaking: the type of theory covered in both texts—highly abstract and often mathematical in