Friedrich Engels and Rudolph Virchow taught us a great deal about the social determinants of health. Their analyses – largely descriptive prose, full of passion and rage – demonstrated with admirable clarity the impact of social structure on the health of individuals. Their work represents the roots of contemporary social research on health inequities. For example, it can be clearly seen in Paul Farmer’s conceptualisation of ‘structural violence’. But what about contemporary quantitative analyses of health inequities? Taking as an example Richard Wilkinson’s income inequality model, this essay explores the links between the classic works of Engels and Virchow and the quantitative approaches now used to examine the social determinants of health.