Chapter 3 Annotation

In chapter three of Berridge’s Public Health: A Very Short Introduction, she starts off by saying that without understanding where public health started, we will not be able to understand it in the current day. Throughout the very early days of public health, around 4000 years ago, we can see traces of an organized effort to optimize the health of the people. This chapter explains that the biggest area for public health during these very early years was around building and the disposal of wastes through plumbing. Both of these ancient efforts are still a public health effort today.

This chapter then moved onto the Greeks, who permanently shifted the efforts of public health. Hippocrates changed the ideals of people, and began the shift of the ideas of disease from an idea that disease was a punishment of the gods, to the idea that things and peoples routines could cause disease. Hippocrates and his works made medicine a holistic medicine, and even though he thought that the health was in the balance of the four humors, it was still a large step in the medical field.

In the middle ages, malnutrition and disease were the leading causes of death, and this was not to change. Berridge explains that there was a huge boom in the Bubonic plague, which changed the field of public health drastically. The worst years for the Bubonic plague were from the 13^th to 14^th century.  The suffering of the people in these times was great, and it came to public health to try to stem the flow. Berridge explained that one of the key things to come out of this time was the technique of quarantine. In Italy, they would quarantine ships traveling from areas with a high amount of the plague in order to stop the spread through Italy’s ports. Leprosy was uncommon throughout the ancient times, but with the population boom, it began to become more prevalent. People who had leprosy were also subject to quarantine in the medieval times. They were often ignored or excommunicated by the community, for fear of also catching the disease.

One thing that could be very useful in this chapter would be the looking at life expectancy. It was very interesting to see the changes, and it was interesting to see that it may have been somewhat skewed due to the amount of babies that died in or shortly after birth. It could also be useful to know the history of quarantines, and the early history of public health.