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 well-being. 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.