In a highlight of Yale University’s celebration of alumnus Noah Webster, Curtis Patton, professor emeritus at the Yale School of Public Health, honored the man best known for his dictionary as the “father of epidemiology and public health in America.” “Research into epidemics—investigating causes of disease—was a major force in Webster’s career as a public servant,” Patton said at a lecture Thursday, the opening day of a schoolwide birthday tribute, “Noah Webster 250: Shaping a Language, Defining a Nation.”
Driven by concern for humanity, an insistence upon social order, and a desire to bolster American mercantile trade, Webster examined diseases such as yellow fever and smallpox, working with the science available in the late 18th century to refine theories and practices of disease prevention and control.
Patton said that C.–E.A. Winslow, the University’s first chair of public health in 1915, habitually reviewed and critiqued Webster’s writings.