Understanding Public Health: Public Health in History

"This clear and informative volume, packed with rich sources and illustrations, will be a must for students and scholars embarking on a study of public health. Covering a range of geographical areas and a wide array of topics, it also succeeds in being challenging and thought-provoking, urging its readers to engage with the ways in which historical research can shape our understanding of current health issues."
Professor Hilary Marland, Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick, UK

"The great strength of Public Health in History is that its authors show how … history is always a dialogue between the present and the past, and present policy is always informed by understandings of the past. The book is comprehensive in the range of areas covered, yet uses case-studies to explore issues in depth. It will be essential reading for anyone who works or has an interest in public health then and now."
Professor Michael Worboys, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, UK

This fascinating book offers a wide ranging exploration of the history of public health and the development of health services over the past two centuries. The book surveys the rise and redefinition of public health since the sanitary revolution of the mid-nineteenth century, assessing the reforms in the post World War II years and the coming of welfare states.

Importantly, the book also includes:

• A comparative examination of why healthcare has taken such different trajectories in different countries
• Case studies on malaria, sexual health, alcohol and substance abuse
• Exercises enabling readers to easily interact with and critically assess historical source material
• Visual materials and illustrations ranging from a fifteenth century syphilis sufferer to the 1980s HIV/AIDS mass media campaigns

Written by a team of historians from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, this is the definitive guide for teaching the history of public health and health services.

Public Health in History will engage health students, practitioners, policy makers and anyone who would like know more about these crucial areas of public health in countries across the global north and global south.

Series Editors: Rosalind Plowman and Nicki Thorogood.

Contributors: Maureen Malowany, John Manton and Suzanne Taylor.

Virginia Berridge is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.

Martin Gorsky is Senior lecturer in History at the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.

Alex Mold is Lecturer in History in the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.