Invited editorial: the three Solitudes

摘要

A well known Canadian novel of the early post war years, entitled The Two Solitudes, dealt with a tragic love affair in Montreal played out against a back- ground of two divided cultures-anglophone and francophone-which die not communicate with or understand one another. In the affairs of occupational health, we have three solitudes: epidemioloyg, toxi- cology and occupational hygiene. The paradigm is, of course, that clinical observations, suggesting a poss- ible link between disease and the workplace, lead to epidemiological studies designed to refine and quan- tify the association, complemented by the efforts of hygienists to clarify the nature of suspected exposures and of toxicologists to explore explanatory mechanisms.