Tropical medicine

The tropical medicine is the field of medicine that deals with the control, prevention and epidemiology of diseases are spread from there starting worldwide occur in tropical and subtropical climates exclusively or predominantly or. While classical tropical medicine as a subspecialty of Infectious Diseases comprises only infectious diseases, the field of modern tropical medicine has been extended to non-infectious diseases of these climates and the specific social and economic conditions of medical care in tropical countries; This also applies for diseases in humans and in animals. The increasing distance tourism and additional migrations as constituting a particular importance of tropical medicine in the prevention, detection and treatment of so-called imported tropical diseases in non- tropical countries. Thus, the tropical medicine is also part of travel medicine and the state disease control.

The Tropical Medicine as an independent discipline emerged only in the last third of the 19th century. Although it has been frequently reported in ancient times, and especially since the Age of Discovery, with its rise of European naval powers of diseases that occurred only in warm climates or were introduced from there to Europe, there is no independent medical specialty formed. It is the combination of colonial economies of industrialization and scientific advances in the fields of medical microbiology, bacteriology and parasitology in the 19th century led to the targeted research and specialization.