Abstract
From the 1798 maps of New York City’s yellow fever epidemic to those of Covid-19’s global pandemic, mapping has been central to the study of epidemic and pandemic events. From the start, it was the map that launched the idea of a scientific approach to a disease’s origin. It has always been in the map that disease ecologies have been constructed in the fight against epidemic events and for public health. By the end of the last century, new computer programs advancing better statistical analysis were coupled with increasingly, powerful desktop mapping software. Much has changed in the way data is collected, presented and analyzed. Syndromic technologies of data collection and distribution—local to global—have revolutionized what earlier were arduous, timely procedures. But as this review attempts to demonstrate, with these advances mapping still remains a central tool in the analysis of epidemic disease and more general studies in public health.