Friedrich Prinzing was born in Uln in 1859 and grew up the son of a pastry chef. He ended up leaving to study medicine in Vienna, Munich, Berlin, and T bingen from 1877 to 1883, whereafter he earned his doctorate in medicine and returned to set up practice in his hometown of Ulm.
In addition to practicing practical medicine, Prinzing also had a fascination with the relationships between socioeconomic problems and their correlation to medical issues in the population. He published many works relating to the topic, including the first modern overview of medical statistics: “The Handbook of Medical Statistics” in 1906.
“Epidemics Resulting From Wars” is another of his published works in which he gives an account of wars around the world, the size of the armies who fought them, and the correlation between these and the resulting illnesses which arose from them directly such as typhus fever, dysentery, and typhoid.