Sauer's 'Origins and Dispersals

Its Implications for the Geography of Disease

Bibliographic Data

ID8962497
AuthorsPeter Haggett (corresponding author)
Year1992
Volume17
Issue4
Pages387-387
Publication date1992-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2307/622706
OpenAlexW2010928639
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited6

Carl Sauer's Bowman Lectures to the American Geographical Society were given forty years ago. Although Sauer remains a major and much cited figure in geography today most of the attention is focused on his historical and environmental writing. This paper looks at the legacy of the Bowman Lectures through the two editions of Agricultural origins and dispersals2 and relates them to a different contemporary problem of origin and dispersal. The emergence of new epidemic diseases in the last two decades raises afresh the question of where and when diseases originate and how they then spread around the world. As for agriculture, the origins of most diseases lies too far in the past to be resolved, while spread can be accurately tracked only over recent centuries. It is argued that Sauer's approach to his problem contains lessons that can be drawn upon in today's approaches to disease origins

Economic geography · Geography · Animal Disease Management and Epidemiology · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research · Zoonotic diseases and public health