Developments in Public Health
Overview
Public health became an important issue in the eighteenth century for two reasons. First, the Industrial Revolution was exerting a profound influence on the environment and the health of workers, and urbanization meant that more people were crowding into cities. With this growing population came increased incidences of disease. While reforms for industry and new sanitation practices became the focus of the public health movement early in the 1700s, the European and British public health movement did not gather its full strength until after 1750. In the U.S., serious efforts at improving the public's health did not get underway until the 1780s.
Background
The years 1700 to 1799 are also known as the period of the Enlightenment, an international intellectual movement that revolutionized political, philosophical, social, and scientific thinking. The great figures during the Enlightenment strove to improve the world and the circumstances of humankind. Betterment of the public health was among the goals of many Enlightenment thinkers.
Both in Europe and the New World, science was increasingly employed to better human lives and the conditions under which people lived. The idea that unsanitary conditions could spawn and spread diseases, that germs were the cause of many illness, and that many illnesses were caused by contact with sick people—a concept called "contagion"—began to dominate medical thinking and change health practices.
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