Filth Disease : Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England

Steere-williams, Jacob

ISBN 10: 1648250815 / ISBN 13: 9781648250811

Published by University of Rochester Press, 2024

About this Item

Unread book in perfect condition. Seller Inventory # 45948475

Bibliographic Details

Title: Filth Disease : Typhoid Fever and the ...

Publisher: University of Rochester Press

Publication Date: 2024

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis:

Shows how the investigation of local outbreaks of typhoid fever in Victorian Britain led to the emergence of the modern discipline of epidemiology as the leading science of public health

Typhoid fever is a food- and water-borne infectious disease that was insidious and omnipresent in Victorian Britain. It was one of the most prolific diseases of the Industrial Revolution. There was a palpable public anxiety aboutthe disease in the Victorian era, no doubt fueled by media coverage of major outbreaks across the nation, but also because Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, died of the disease in 1861. Their son and heir, Prince Albert Edward, contracted and nearly succumbed to typhoid a decade later in 1871.

The Filth Disease shows that typhoid was at the center of a number of critical debates about health, science, and governance. Victorian public health reformers, the book argues, working in central and local government, framed typhoid as the most pressing public health problem in order to persuade local officials to implement sanitary infrastructure to prevent the spread of disease. In this period British epidemiologists uncovered how typhoid is spread via food and water supplies, disrupting the longstanding idea that typhoid was spread via filth. In the process the modern disciple of epidemiology emerged as the chief science of public health. Typhoid was as much a social and political problem as it was a scientific one, and The Filth Disease provides a striking reminder of the cultural context in which infectious diseases strike populations and how scientists study them.

About the Author:

JACOB STEERE-WILLIAMS is an Associate professor of history at the College of Charleston. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota in 2011.