The Field of Public Health Emerges in Response to Epidemic Diseases

The Field of Public Health Emerges in Response to Epidemic Diseases

Overview

Public health broadly combines efforts towards ensuring physical health through medical research, city planning, regulations in the workplace, and sanitation. The field of public health emerged in the nineteenth century as a response to a surge of epidemic diseases, which were largely caused by the Industrial Revolution in the Western world and the new living conditions that industrial culture created. The concentration of the poor in urban centers provoked epidemic diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and yellow fever, and social reformers and the scientific community invested in medical and environmental safeguards to protect their populations from these widespread diseases. Over the course of the century, discoveries of the causes of disease primarily in France, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States transformed the field of public health into a socio-medical operation necessary to the health of modern communities.

Background

The philosophical roots of the public health movement are the liberal politics of the Age of Enlightenment, an eighteenth-century period notable for its optimistic belief in social progress and the perfectibility of humankind. Political revolutions in France and America inspired confidence in man's ability to transform his culture into a liberated community free from the tradition of a ruling aristocracy.

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