Chapter 4 Annotation

The fourth chapter to Berridges Public Health: A Short Introduction focuses on the 1800’s to the 1900’s. This time in history saw a huge explosion in population, a jump in the amount of people living in urban areas, and a jump in the industrialization of the world. The chapter starts off by noting the fact that life expectancy did not change throughout the 1800’s. They attribute this to the decreased living conditions in the newly urbanized areas. These conditions stayed relatively the same, until the 1900’s, where there were public health efforts to clean up the cities.

There was a huge jump in the field of public health in the 19^th century as a direct effort to address the issues that came with the urbanization and industrialization of the world. These came with a plethora of issues, such as the spread of cholera. This is accepted to be the driving force behind the 19^th century movement. Cholera has a high mortality rate, and is very easy to spread in close quarters, so this was a prime place for spreading. Initially, public health officials would quarantine infected people, and inspect the goods being brought through ports. Although, this was found to be ineffective, and it still killed many of the lower class individuals.

The cholera epidemics led to some changes in public health. This was mostly due to the overwhelming evidence that poor people got sick, and were living in far harsher conditions than anyone else. Edwin Chadwick was very key in this movement, and he wrote reports on the sanitary conditions of the poor. Edwin Chadwick did a study in which he compiled surveys from around 2,000 people, which then proved the likeliness of death went hand in hand with social class. This led him to create a system of waste disposal in an effort to stop the spread of disease.

It was during this time that vaccines were created. They were created from the observation that people who had been infected with cowpox could not be infected with smallpox. After proving that vaccinations were possible, it soon became one of the most important things to happen in the field of public health. In the 1840s, vaccination for smallpox was mandatory in children, and it led to a drop in the deaths due to smallpox.

At the end of this chapter, Berridge goes through public health at the turn of the century. The focus changed from improving the environment, to the individual.  The focus also changed from infectious diseases, to something known as the racial purge. AKA tuberculosis, alcoholism, and venereal diseases.

This chapter is very useful, as there was a lot of information in it. The ideas of this time period are still very well in use today, and some of the biggest steps in public health were accomplished throughout the years in this chapter. The cleaning of the cities was huge, along with the development of vaccines, and the germ theory. All of these are still in use in the modern times.