National developments in the 18th and 19th centuries

Nineteenth-century movements to improve sanitation occurred simultaneously in several European countries and were built upon foundations laid in the period between 1750 and 1830. From about 1750 the population of Europe increased rapidly, and with this increase came a heightened awareness of the large numbers of infant deaths and of the unsavoury conditions in prisons and in mental institutions.

This period also witnessed the beginning and the rapid growth of hospitals. Hospitals founded in the United Kingdom, as the result of voluntary efforts by private citizens, helped to create a pattern that was to become familiar in public health services. First, a social evil is recognized and studies are undertaken through individual initiative. These efforts mold public opinion and attract governmental attention. Finally, such agitation leads to governmental action.

This era was also characterized by efforts to educate people in health matters. In 1752 British physician Sir John Pringle published a book that discussed ventilation in barracks and the provision of latrines. Two years earlier he had written about jail fever (later thought to be typhus), and again he emphasized the same needs as well as personal hygiene. In 1754 James Lind, who had worked as a surgeon in the British navy, published a treatise on scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C.

As the Industrial Revolution developed, the health and welfare of the workers deteriorated. In England, where the Industrial Revolution and its adverse effects on health were first experienced, there arose in the 19th century a movement toward sanitary reform that finally led to the establishment of public health institutions. Between 1801 and 1841 the population of London doubled and that of Leeds nearly tripled. With such growth there also came rising death rates. Between 1831 and 1844 the death rate per thousand increased in Birmingham from 14.6 to 27.2, in Bristol from 16.9 to 31, and in Liverpool from 21 to 34.8. These figures were the result of an increase in the urban population that far exceeded available housing and of the subsequent development of conditions that led to widespread disease and poor health.

Around the beginning of the 19th century, humanitarians and philanthropists in England worked to educate the population and the government on problems associated with population growth, poverty, and epidemics. In 1798 English economist and demographer Thomas Malthus wrote about population growth, its dependence on food supply, and the control of breeding by contraceptive methods. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham propounded the idea of the greatest good of the greatest number as a yardstick against which the morality of certain actions might be judged. British physician Thomas Southwood Smith founded the Health of Towns Association in 1839, and by 1848 he served as a member of the new government department, then called the General Board of Health. He published reports on quarantine, cholera, yellow fever, and the benefits of sanitary improvements.

The Poor Law Commission, created in 1834, explored problems of community health and suggested means for solving them. Its report, in 1838, argued that “the expenditures necessary to the adoption and maintenance of measures of prevention would ultimately amount to less than the cost of the disease now constantly engendered.” Sanitary surveys proved that a relationship exists between communicable disease and filth in the environment, and it was said that safeguarding public health is the province of the engineer rather than of the physician.

The Public Health Act of 1848 established a General Board of Health to furnish guidance and aid in sanitary matters to local authorities, whose earlier efforts had been impeded by lack of a central authority. The board had authority to establish local boards of health and to investigate sanitary conditions in particular districts. Since this time several public health acts have been passed to regulate sewage and refuse disposal, the housing of animals, the water supply, prevention and control of disease, registration and inspection of private nursing homes and hospitals, the notification of births, and the provision of maternity and child welfare services.

Advances in public health in England had a strong influence in the United States, where one of the basic problems, as in England, was the need to create effective administrative mechanisms for the supervision and regulation of community health. In America recurrent epidemics of yellow fever, cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and typhus made the need for effective public health administration a matter of urgency. The so-called Shattuck report, published in 1850 by the Massachusetts Sanitary Commission, reviewed the serious health problems and grossly unsatisfactory living conditions in Boston. Its recommendations included an outline for a sound public health organization based on a state health department and local boards of health in each town. In New York City (in 1866) such an organization was created for the first time in the United States.

Nineteenth-century developments in Germany and France pointed the way for future public health action. France was preeminent in the areas of political and social theory. As a result, the public health movement in France was deeply influenced by a spirit of public reform. The French contributed significantly to the application of scientific methods for the identification, treatment, and control of communicable disease.

Although many public health trends in Germany resembled those of England and France, the absence of a centralized government until after the Franco-German War did cause significant differences. After the end of that war and the formation of the Second Reich, a centralized public health unit was formed. Another development was the emergence of hygiene as an experimental laboratory science. In 1865 the creation at Munich of the first chair in experimental hygiene signaled the entrance of science into the field of public health.

There were other advances. The use of statistical analysis in handling health problems emerged. The forerunner of the U.S. Public Health Service came into being, in 1798, with the establishment of the Marine Hospital Service. Almost one hundred years later, the service enforced port quarantine for the first time. (Port quarantine was the isolation of a ship at port for a limited period to allow time for the manifestation of disease.)

Developments from 1875

The work of Italian bacteriologist Agostino Bassi with silkworm infections early in the 19th century prepared the way for the later demonstration that specific organisms cause a number of diseases. Some questions, however, were still unanswered. These included problems related to variations in transmissibility of organisms and in susceptibility of individuals to disease. Light was thrown on these questions by discoveries of human and animal carriers of infectious diseases.

French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur made many important contributions to science, including the discovery that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease.Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

In 1881 Pasteur established the principle of protective vaccines and thus stimulated an interest in the mechanisms of immunity. The development of microbiology and immunology had immense consequences for community health. In the 19th century the efforts of health departments to control contagious disease consisted in attempts to improve environmental conditions. As bacteriologists identified the microorganisms that cause specific diseases, progress was made toward the rational control of specific infectious diseases.

In the United States the diagnostic bacteriologic laboratory was developed—a practical application of the theory of bacteriology, which evolved largely in Europe. These laboratories, established in many cities to protect and improve the health of the community, were a practical outgrowth of the study of microorganisms, just as the establishment of health departments was an outgrowth of an earlier movement toward sanitary reform. And just as the health department was the administrative mechanism for dealing with community health problems, the public health laboratory was the tool for the implementation of the public health program. Evidence of the effectiveness of this new phase of public health may be seen in statistics of immunization against diphtheria—in New York City the mortality rate due to diphtheria fell from 785 per 100,000 in 1894 to 1.1 per 100,000 in 1940.

While improvements in environmental sanitation during the first decade of the 20th century were valuable in dealing with some problems, they were of only limited usefulness in solving the many health problems found among the poor. In the slums of England and the United States, malnutrition, venereal disease, alcoholism, and other diseases were widespread. Nineteenth-century economic liberalism held that increased production of goods would eventually bring an end to scarcity, poverty, and suffering. By the turn of the century, it seemed clear that deliberate and positive intervention by reform-minded groups, including the state, also would be necessary. For this reason many physicians, clergymen, social workers, public-spirited citizens, and government officials promoted social action. Organized efforts were undertaken to prevent tuberculosis, lessen occupational hazards, and improve children’s health.

The first half of the 20th century saw further advances in community health care, particularly in the welfare of mothers and children and the health of schoolchildren, the emergence of the public health nurse, and the development of voluntary health agencies, health education programs, and occupational health programs.

In the second half of the 19th century, two significant attempts were made to provide medical care for large populations. One was by Russia and took the form of a system of medical services in rural districts; after the communist revolution, this was expanded to include complete government-supported medical and public health services for everyone. Similar programs have since been adopted by a number of European and Asian countries. The other attempt was prepayment for medical care, a form of social insurance first adopted toward the close of the 19th century in Germany, where prepayment for medical care had long been familiar. A number of other European countries adopted similar insurance programs.

In the United Kingdom a royal-commission examination of the Poor Law in 1909 led to a proposal for a unified state medical service. This service was the forerunner of the 1946 National Health Service Act, which represented an attempt by a modern industrialized country to provide services to all people.

Later, prenatal care made a substantial contribution to preventive medicine, with the education of mothers influencing the physical and psychological health of families and being passed on to succeeding generations. Prenatal care provides the opportunity to educate the mother in personal hygiene, diet, exercise, the damaging effects of smoking, the careful use of alcohol, and the dangers of drug abuse.

Public health interests also have turned to disorders such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, thrombosis, lung disease, and arthritis, among others. There is increasing evidence that several of these disorders are caused by factors in the environment. For example, there exists a clear association between cigarette smoking and the eventual onset of certain lung and cardiovascular diseases. Theoretically, these disorders are preventable if the environment can be altered. Health education, particularly aimed at disease prevention, is of great importance and is a responsibility of national and local government agencies as well as voluntary bodies. Life expectancy has increased in almost every country that has taken steps toward reducing the incidence of preventable disease.