History of public health in the United Kingdom

History of public health in the United Kingdom covers Public health in the United Kingdom since about 1700.

18th century

With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, living standards amongst the working population began to worsen, with cramped and unsanitary urban conditions. Unavailable housing led to the rapid growth of slums and the per capita death rate began to rise alarmingly, almost doubling in Birmingham and Liverpool. Thomas Malthus warned of the dangers of overpopulation in 1798. His ideas, as well as those of Jeremy Bentham, became very influential in government circles in the early years of the 19th century.^[1] The latter part of the century brought the establishment of the basic pattern of improvements in public health over the next two centuries: a social evil was identified, private philanthropists brought attention to it, and changing public opinion led to government action.^[1] The 18th century saw rapid growth in voluntary hospitals in England.^[2]

The practice of vaccination began in the 1800s, following the pioneering work of Edward Jenner in treating smallpox. James Lind's discovery of the causes of scurvy amongst sailors and its mitigation via the introduction of fruit on lengthy voyages was published in 1754 and led to the adoption of this idea by the Royal Navy.^[3]

Efforts were also made to promulgate health matters to the broader public; in 1752 the British physician Sir John Pringle published Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Camp and Garrison, in which he advocated for the importance of adequate ventilation in the military barracks and the provision of latrines for the soldiers.^[4]

19th century

Urban crisis

In the first four decades of the 19th century alone, London's population doubled and even greater growth rates were recorded in the new industrial towns, such as Leeds and Manchester. From 1801 to 1851, the proportion of Englanders living in cities over 20,000 more than doubled from 17% to 38%.^[5]

This rapid urbanization exacerbated the spread of disease in the large conurbations that built up around the workhouses and factories. These settlements were cramped and primitive with no organized sanitation. Disease was inevitable and its incubation in these areas was encouraged by the poor lifestyle of the inhabitants. Not enough new housing was built, and people squeezed into small, dirty apartments, and drank dirty water. One result was high rates of tuberculosis, which became leading cause of death.^[6]

Chadwick and sanitation solutions

Edwin Chadwick (1800–1890) identified the public healthissues in crowded cities and led major reforms in urban sanitation and public health. He pioneered the use of systematic surveys to identify all phases of a complex social problem, and pioneered the use of systematic long-term inspection programmes to make sure the reforms operated as planned. Following a serious outbreak of typhus in 1838, Chadwick convinced the Poor Law Board that an enquiry was urgently required. Chadwick sent questionnaires to every Poor Law Union, and talked to surveyors, builders, prison governors, police officers and factory inspectors to obtain additional data about the lives of the poor. He edited the information himself, and prepared it for publication in 1842 at his own expense. It became a best-seller. His Report on The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain caught the public imagination and was soon incorporated into English law.^[7]^[8]^[9]

Chadwick argued eight main points, emphasizing the absolute necessity of better water supplies and of a drainage system to remove waste, as ways to lower the death rate. He saw that every house needed a permanent water supply, rather than the intermittent supplies from standpipes that were often provided. He proposed each house would have a constant water supply, and privies would ensure that soil was discharged into egg-shaped sewers, to be carried away and spread on the land as manure, preventing rivers from becoming polluted. Chadwick understood that both water supply and drainage were important, since there had to be enough sewers to carry the waste away. Chadwick later helped to ensure that the Waterworks Clauses Act of 1847 limited profits, and required them to provide a constant supply of wholesome water for houses, and a supply for cleansing sewers and watering streets.^[10]

Germs caused cholera

Chadwick was working on a solution but exactly what was causing the disease was not known until the work of John Snow in 1854.^[11] That year there was a severe outbreak of cholera in Soho, London. It was part of the 1846–1860 cholera pandemic happening worldwide. It killed 616 people in England, and prompted Snow to map the people who got sick and show they had all been drinking from one pump in Broad Street. He then deduced that one specific source of germ-contaminated water was the source of all the cholera cases. On outsider who carried the disease had used the pump and somehow made its water poisonous. Previously doctors assumed that cholera was not cause invisible particles in the air --this was the "Miasma theory"). Snow's maps were a powerful confirmation of the Germ theory of disease, and explained how the germs spread. ^[12]^[13] Snow's great discovery decisively influenced public health policies and quickly led to the construction of improved sanitation facilities. The term "focus of infection" started to be used to describe sites, such as one particular water pump in Broad Street that spread the cholera germs. ^[14]

Notes

^ ^a ^b Rhodes P, Bryant JH (20 May 2019). "Public Health". Encyclopædia Britannica.
^ Carruthers GB, Carruthers LA (2005). A History of Britain's Hospitals. Book Guild Publishers. ISBN 978-1-85776-905-0.
^ Vale B (May 2008). "The Conquest of Scurvy in the Royal Navy 1793–1800: A Challenge to Current Orthodoxy". The Mariner's Mirror. 94 (2): 160–175. doi:10.1080/00253359.2008.10657052.
^ Selwyn S (July 1966). "Sir John Pringle: hospital reformer, moral philosopher and pioneer of antiseptics". Medical History. 10 (3): 266–274. doi:10.1017/s0025727300011133. PMC 1033606. PMID 5330009.
^ Rosen p 202.
^ Romola J. Davenport, "Urbanization and mortality in Britain, c. 1800–50." Economic History Review 73.2 (2020): 455-485. online
^ G. M. Binnie, Early Victorian Water Engineers (Thomas Telford, 1981) pp 4–5.
^ S.E. Finer, The life and times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (1952) excerpt 209-242.
^ For the text of Report of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; with appendices see online copy..
^ Binnie, pp=7-23.
^ Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (W.W. Norton, 1997) pp. 397–416.
^ Eyeler, William (July 2001). "The changing assessments of John Snow's and William Farr's Cholera Studies". Sozial- und Präventivmedizin. 46 (4): 225–32. doi:10.1007/BF01593177. PMID 11582849. S2CID 9549345.
^ Sandra Hempel, The Medical Detective: John Snow, Cholera, and the Mystery of the Broad Street Pump (Granta Books, 2006).
^ George Rosen, A History of Public Health (1958) pp. 285–288,

History of public health in the United Kingdom

18th century

19th century

Urban crisis

Chadwick and sanitation solutions

Germs caused cholera

See also

Notes

Further reading

Biographical

Historiography

Primary sources