1831: the map that launched the idea of global health.

Today we take for granted the idea of global health, of disease as an international event. Increasingly, we assume as well that the international spread of disease can be traced to human travel patterns as well as to recurring environmental conditions. Perversely, the idea of ‘global health’ and its inverse, global disease, owes little to the three-dimensional imaging of the planet and almost everything to the two-dimensional plane of the map. Here the idea of global disease is traced from its beginnings in the 18th century to its 19th-century introduction in maps of the first cholera pandemic. This global perspective, and the responsibilities it promoted among civil officials, can be seen in modern studies of cancer, influenza and other conditions with both environmental foundations and international presence.