In 1927 Kermack and McKendrick introduced and analyzed a rather general epidemic model (nota bene : their model takes the form of a nonlinear renewal equation and the familiar SIR model is but a very special case !). The aim of this lecture is to revive the spatial variant of this model, as studied in the late seventies by Horst Thieme and myself (see the AMS book 'Spatial Deterministic Epidemics' by L. Rass and J. Radcliffe, 2003). The key result is a characterization of c_0 , the lowest possible speed of travelling waves and the proof that c_0 is also the asymptotic speed of epidemic propagation.