Public health and social justice in the age of Chadwick
Subtitle: Britain, 1800-1854
By: Christopher Hamlin.
Series: Cambridge history of medicine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK; New York, NY, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 368
Subjects: Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.; Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.; Public health -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Sanitation -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Public Health -- history -- Great Britain.; Sanitation -- history -- Great Britain.
Description: "The 1830s and 1840s are the formative years of modern public health in Britain, when the poor law bureaucrat Edwin Chadwick conceived his vision of public health through public works and began the campaign for the construction of the kinds of water and sewerage works that ultimately became standard components of urban infrastructure throughout the developed world. This book first explores that vision and campaign against the backdrop of the great "condition-of-England" questions of the period, of what rights and expectations working people could justifiably have in regard to political participation, food, shelter, and conditions of work. It examines the ways Chadwick's sanitarianism fit the political needs of the much hated Poor Law Commission and of Whig and Tory governments, each seeking some antidote to revolutionary Chartism. It then reviews the Chadwickians' efforts to solve the host of problems they met in trying to implement the sanitary idea: of what responsibilities central and local units of government, and private contractors, were to have; of how townspeople could be persuaded to embark on untried public technologies; of where the new public health experts were to come from; and of how elegant technical designs were to be fitted to the unique social, political, and geographic circumstances of individual towns." "This book offers modern public health professionals elements of a forgotten professional heritage that might be useful in responding to the bewildering range of health problems we now confront."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [342]-357) and index.