This bibliography is divided into three sections. The first two contain important historical and modern works on public health, from 2000<B.<C.<E. to the present. These works are presented chronologically so as to give a sense of the development of public health, and of the various disciplines that make up the field. The third section is devoted to works on the history of health, medicine, and public health. These are listed in alphabetical order, by author. It is hoped that this annotated bibliography will aid the reader in understanding the extraordinary progress of the field of public health.
CLASSICS OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND MEDICINE
Code of Hammurabi. This code, dating from c. 2000 <B.<C.<E., is among the oldest extant medical documents. It suggests ways to stay healthy, and includes rules of behavior and fee schedules for the priest-physicians of ancient Babylon, providing interesting insights into Babylonian civilization. It is summarized in H. E. Sigerist, History of Medicine, Vol. 1, Primitive and Archaic Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951).
Hippocrates. "Airs, Waters, Places" and "On Epidemics," in Hippocratic Writings, ed. G. R. Lloyd (New York: Penguin, 1978). The surviving documents from the medical school of Hippocrates of Cos, located at Epidaurus c. 440–330 <B.<C.<E., reveal some of the best features of classical Greek civilization. They cover many aspects of medicine, including clinical descriptions of diseases, as well as the oath that is still used as the foundation for good medical conduct and much teaching of medical ethics. "Airs, Waters, Places" was the first text on environmental health; it includes ideas on how individuals and communities can protect good health. "On Epidemics" contains many good descriptions of contagious and other diseases of public health importance.
Regimen Sanitas Salernitarum. Translated by P. Parente as The Regime of Health of the Medical School of Salerno (New York: Vantage, 1967). First published in 1484, the material gathered in this text of the Salerno medical school dates from the late thirteenth century and consists of double-rhymed Latin hexameters describing many sensible dietetic and hygienic precepts, including avoidance of overeating and the desirability of personal cleanliness.
Fracastorius (Girolamo Fracastoro). De contagione (Venice: Lucaeantonij Iuntae Florentini, 1546). Translated by W. C. Wright as On Contagion (New York and London: Putnam, 1930). This is the first systematic description of ways infection can be transmitted—by direct contact, via infected items such as clothing and utensils, or by droplets, as in coughing and sneezing. Fracastorius did not, however, identify vector-borne transmission or the role of contaminated water and food. Fracastorius also wrote a mock-heroic poem, Syphilis, sive morbis gallicus (1530), about a swineherd, Syphilis, afflicted with the disease that ever since has carried his name. Fracastorius recognized that this disease is sexually transmitted and he suggested that diseases might be transmitted by invisible particles, and was therefore ahead of his time in hinting at a "germ theory" of disease.
Graunt, John. Natural and Political Observations, Mentioned in a Following Index, and Made upon the Bills of Mortality (London, 1662; reprint, North Stratford, NH: Ayer Company Publishers, 1975). Graunt was the first to use records of deaths and their causes to analyze the state of a population's health. His analysis of the London population showed that male mortality rates were higher than those of females at all ages from birth onward, revealed urban-rural differences in mortality rates, and showed the fluctuations of those rates due to epidemics, notably of the plague. Graunt's work was the founding text for the science of vital statistics.
Petty, William. An Essay Concerning the Multiplication of Mankind; Together with Another Essay on Political Arithmetic (London and Dublin: 1682). Petty's work emulated Graunt's. He examined records of ages and causes of death in London, Dublin, and other cities, emphasizing the economic implications of premature deaths among those who produced the nation's wealth.
Halley, Edmund. "An Estimate of the Degrees of Mortality of Mankind, Drawn from Curious Tables of the Births and Funerals at the City of Breslaw, with an Attempt to Ascertain the Price of Annuities upon Lives." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 17 (1683):596–610. An important advance in vital statistics, this work provided the foundation for life insurance and the work of actuaries.
Ramazzini, Bernardino. De morbis artificum diatriba (Modena: 1713). Translated by W. C. Wright as Diseases of Workers (New York: Academy of Medicine, 1964). A descriptive catalogue of the illnesses—mostly attributable to exposure on the job—commonly found among workers in many occupations. This is the first text on occupational medicine.
Lind, James. A Treatise of the Scurvy (Edinburgh: 1753; reprint, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1953). This work is often cited as the earliest example of a clinical trial. Lind used pairs of sailors who were allocated various dietary regimens to demonstrate that small daily doses of lime juice prevented the onset of scurvy on long sea voyages. Lind thus showed also that this disease was not contagious but associated with a dietary deficiency.
Frank, Johan Pieter. System einer vollständigen medicinischen Polizey (Vienna and Budapest: 1779). Translated by E. Lesky as A System of Complete Medical Police (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). Frank's massive, multivolume work discusses many aspects of personal and public health and prescribes rules and laws for such practices as city cleanliness, the inspection of food premises, and the regulation of prostitution. It also contains many suggestions about diet and lifestyle. It is the foundation text for public health law and adopts a paternalist approach that has prevailed until at least the middle of the twentieth century.
Jenner, Edward. An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae (London: 1798; reprint, London: Dawsons, 1966). Jenner describes his successful experiment with cowpox vaccine in this short book, which may be the most important single work in the field of public health published anywhere in the past millennium. This work led directly to the World Health Organization campaign responsible for the eradication of smallpox, among the most deadly of all the contagious epidemic diseases, less than two hundred years later.
Malthus, Thomas. An Essay on the Principle of Population, or a View of Its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness with an Inquiry into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils Which It Occasions (London: J. Johnson, 1798; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Malthus uses simple arithmetical calculations to show that human reproductive rates would sooner or later outstrip the capacity of food supplies to sustain the numbers in the population. His method is sound, but his predictions of imminent famine are invalid because he does not allow for the increases in food production in the Americas and Australia in the nineteenth century. All that may have been wrong is his time scale: The Malthusian crisis could yet overtake humanity.
Louis, Pierre Charles Alexandre. Recherches anatomico-pathologiques sur la phtisie (Paris: C. Gabon, 1825). Translated by W. H. Walshe as Researches on Phthisis: Anatomical, Pathological, and Therapeutical (London: Sydenham Society, 1844). This work and others by Louis laid the foundations for statistical analysis of medical data and was instrumental in establishing the science of medical statistics.
Henle, Friedrich Gustav Jacob. Von den Miasmen und Contagien (Berlin: 1840). Translated by G. Rosen as On Miasmata and Contagia (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938). Henle's critical analysis of the characteristics of contagion is among the works that stimulated the rise of the germ theory of disease.
Chadwick, Edwin. Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1842; reprint, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1965). A monumental work by a dedicated civil servant, Chadwick's report describes the appalling and unsanitary conditions under which the vast majority of people lived in the new cities that grew up in the early phases of the Industrial Revolution. This work set the scene for new legislation regulating housing conditions, and was thus seminal in transforming sanitary and hygienic conditions that were the most important single contributing factor for the improvements in public health in the second half of the nineteenth century in Britain and in other industrial nations that followed Britain's lead.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever." New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery 1 (1842):503–540. Holmes, a Boston physician, published in this paper the evidence that women in child labor who were attended by physicians who washed their hands before attending them were much less likely to get puerperal fever, which at that time caused many maternal deaths soon after childbirth. Unfortunately, most of his colleagues ignored his findings and women continued to die of this preventable obstetric disaster.
Shattuck, Lemuel. Report to the Committee of the City Council Appointed to Obtain the Census of Boston for the Year 1845 (Boston: 1846; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1976). This work is a comprehensive census assessment of the city of Boston in the mid-nineteenth century, a landmark in statistical census data and its contribution to public health. It includes twenty-two sections on various features of Boston's population and living conditions, including birthplace, water supply, education, health, occupation, wealth, marriages, and deaths.
Semmelweis, Ignaz. Die Aetiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbetfiebers (Pest, Wien, and Leipzig: C.A. Hartleben's Verlags-Expedition, 1861). Translated by F. P. Murphy as The Etiology, the Concept, and the Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever (Birmingham, AL: Classics of Medicine Library, 1981). Semmelweis's work is among the first uses of epidemiological methods to establish the causal relationship of behavior (e.g., personal hygiene) to occurrence of a deadly disease, puerperal sepsis, which was killing many women whose child labor was supervised by physicians who did not wash their hands. These findings, like those of Holmes, were rejected by the conservative medical establishment in Vienna. However, Semmelweis's work, published fifteen years after he wrote it, is epidemiologically excellent.
Drake, Daniel. A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological, and Practical on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Grambo, & Co., 1854; reprint, New York: Franklin Burt Publisher, 1971). A classic of early American medicine, initially published in installments from 1850 through 1854, this is a descriptive account of the findings from a survey Drake conducted to investigate the health and sanitation problems encountered by pioneering settlers as they colonized the American West.
Shattuck, Lemuel, et al. Report of the Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts (1850; reprint, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950). The American replication of Chadwick's report, this work was likewise instrumental in leading to improved public health in the industrial heartland of the United States in the late nineteenth century.
Snow, John. On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (London: Churchill, 1855). This monograph describes Snow's rigorous logical analysis of the facts that led him to conduct his epidemiological investigations establishing the role of drinking water polluted with sewage in the transmission of the agent that causes cholera. It is a seminal work on epidemiology that can still be used to teach the subject today.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859; reprint, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). The most significant work on human biology of the past millennium. Darwin presents evidence that establishes beyond any doubt that living creatures, including humans, have undergone prolonged evolutionary changes extending over several billion years since life first appeared on Earth. Humans have been shown by subsequent paleontological discoveries to have evolved over the past 4 million to 6 million years.
Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Hospitals (London: Longman 1863; reprint, New York: Garland, 1989). Nightingale, famous as the founder of modern nursing practice, was a major figure in public health and vital statistics, a member of the London Epidemiological Society, and a prominent social reformer. In this, her most important book, she describes and discusses hygienic design of hospitals and outlines the ways in which records of patient care in hospitals could be used to compile sickness statistics.
Galton, Francis. Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences (London: Macmillan, 1869; reprint, New York: St. Martins, 1978). A classic of human genetics that treats the topic with attention to mathematical probabilities, this work has become a template for later works on biostatistics, such as Karl Pearson's equally significant work, The Grammar of Science (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895; reprint, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1969).
Farr, William. Vital Statistics; a Memorial Volume of Selections from the Reports and Writings of William Farr, ed. N. A. Humphreys (London: The Sanitary Institute, 1885; reprint, Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1975). Farr's many contributions to vital statistics and epidemiology are scattered throughout his annual reports and other writings. Humphreys compiled them in this commemorative volume.
Pasteur, Louis. Oeuvres (Paris: Masson, 1922–1939). Pasteur's scientific papers appeared over many years in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Summaries in English are found in a 1952 biography by René Dubos, Louis Pasteur: Freelance of Science (Boston: Little, Brown).
Koch, Robert. Gesammelte Werke (Leipzig: G. Thieme, 1912). Koch's prolific publications are scattered among many sources and are not readily accessible. Several summary accounts of his life and work are available. Koch made his major discoveries, including the tubercle bacillus and the cholera vibrio, in the 1880s. One good recent account in English, with summaries of key contributions, appears in Alfred S. Evans, Causation and Disease (New York: Plenum, 1993), pp. 18–31.
Virchow, Rudolph Ludwig Karl. Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der offentlichen Medicin und der Seuchenlehre (Berlin: A. Hirschwald, 1879). Translated by R. Rather as Collected Essays on Public Health and Epidemiology (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1985). This two-volume collection contains many of Virchow's most important contributions to public health, mostly dating from the last three decades of the nineteenth century.
Finlay, Carlos Eduardo. Fiebre amarilla experimental (Havana: Manzana Central, 1904). Translated by R. Matas as The Mosquito Hypothetically Considered as an Agent in the Transmission of Yellow Fever Poison (Chapel Hill, NC: Delta Omega Society, 1989). This work by the great Cuban physician and epidemiologist Finlay led to the work undertaken by Finlay and Walter Reed that elucidated the epidemiology of yellow fever.
Simon, John. English Sanitary Institutions Reviewed in Their Course of Development and in Some of Their Political and Social Relations (London: Cassell, 1890; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Company, 1970). Simon was the first Chief Medical Officer of England and Wales, a physician, and a public health specialist. Of his many books, this best summarizes his life's work and his professional outlook.
Ross, Ronald. "The Role of the Mosquito in the Evolution of the Malaria Parasite." Lancet 2 (1898):488–489. Among Ross's numerous publications, this is the most important, being the first description of the essential role of mosquitoes in the transmission of malaria.
Goldberger, Joseph. Goldberger on Pellagra, ed. M. Terris (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964). This is a collection of Goldberger's papers on pellagra, a common seasonal disease in the southern United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Goldberger, sometimes with coauthors, wrote many papers describing his research, establishing that dietary deficiency of vitamin B2 caused pellagra.
Sheppard-Towner Act. In passing the Sheppard-Towner Act (the Infant and Maternity Act of 1921), the U.S. Congress made funds available, to be matched by the states, to assist in developing maternal and child health programs throughout the country. Opposition by medical associations and others to this "intrusion" of the federal government into medical care led to the act's lapse in 1927, but the precedent led to its reestablishment in the 1935 Social Security Act.
Winslow, Charles-Edward Amory. The Evolution and Significance of the Modern Public Health Campaign (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1923). A seminal work on the framework of organized public health services, this volume set the scene for public health in the industrial nations, especially in the United States, throughout much of the remainder of the twentieth century. Winslow was one of the leading creative thinkers in public health in the early twentieth century.
Sydenstricker, Edgar. The Challenge of Facts; Selected Public Health Papers of Edgar Sydenstricker, ed. R. V. Kasius (New York: Prodist, 1974). Sydenstricker was one of the leading figures in American public health in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during which time he brought to the discipline a renewed intellectual rigor combined with epidemiological insights.
Frost, Wade Hampton. Papers of Wade Hampton Frost, M.D.; A Contribution to Epidemiological Methods, ed. K. F. Maxcy (New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1977). Frost (1880–1938), the leading epidemiologist of his time, was a professor and head of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Fleming, Alexander. "On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with Special Reference to Their Use in the Isolation of B Influenzae." British Journal of Experimental Pathology 10 (1929):226–236. The paper reports Fleming's original observation, which led to the development by Fleming, Howard Florey, and Ernst Chain of penicillin, the first true antibiotic.
Watson, James D., and Crick, Francis H. "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid." Nature 171 (4356)(1953):737–738. This is the first paper describing the molecular structure of DNA, from which the science of molecular genetics and the human genome project have developed.
IMPORTANT MODERN MONOGRAPHS, REPORTS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle (New York: Doubleday, Page, and Co., 1906). A striking exposé of the grossly unsanitary conditions that prevailed in the slaughtering segment of the meat industry, Sinclair's work aroused public revulsion, prompted political action to clean up the situation, and inspired the century-long campaign in the United States for pure food.
Beveridge, Sir William. Social Insurance and Allied Services (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1942). As chairman of the writing committee, Beveridge organized this report that became the blueprint for the British National Health Service. Much of what Beveridge recommended was implemented by the Labour government that took office in the United Kingdom near the end of World War II.
Commission on Chronic Illness. Chronic Illness in the United States, Vol.1, Prevention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957). This is the first volume of a four-volume set of reports on major health problems in the United States with causes other than infectious pathogens. The first volume explains the concepts of primary and secondary prevention and emphasizes the importance of prevention as the best way to control these conditions. Volume 2 of the Commission's report deals with long-term care, Volume 3 considers chronic illness in a rural community, and Volume 4 addresses chronic illness in a large city.
Morris, Jeremy N. Uses of Epidemiology (Edinburgh and London: E. and S. Livingstone, 1957). This modern medical classic summarizes the evidence on causes of many noncommunicable diseases, notably coronary heart disease, lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, and the chronic disabling disorders of bones and joints. Later editions update the evidence, but the essential ideas are all contained in this first edition.
Dubos, René J. Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change (New York: Harper, 1959). This book emphasizes the incompatibility of complete freedom from disease with the process of living. It was one of the early works concerning the limitations of medicine in the search for the solution of all health problems.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962). A foundation text of the modern environmental movement, Carson's book is a passionate plea to desist from using pesticides that kill insect species with which humans are interdependent.
Royal College of Physicians. Smoking and Health (London: Royal College of Physicians, 1962). The work by the Royal College of Physicians was the first authoritative report by a responsible national organization to identify cigarette smoking as a causal agent of lung and other respiratory cancers. This document drew upon all the work published up to that time and was in most respects a more cogent statement than the American one that followed it two years later.
U.S. Public Health Service. Smoking and Health, Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964). This document is the first American report on the epidemic of cigarette addiction and its causal relationship to cancer. The report was followed by annual reports that continued for many years, reinforcing and adding to the original evidence and demonstrating that tobacco smoking is also a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, emphysema, and various forms of cancer. These subsequent reports also addressed the addictive nature of nicotine and many other harmful consequences of tobacco use in any form.
Roemer, Milton I. The Organization of Medical Care under Social Security (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1969). A masterly survey of how collective (generally tax-supported) payment for medical care was arranged in many nations.
President's Committee on Health Education. Report of the President's Committee on Health Education (New York: New York Public Affairs Institute, 1973). Appointed by President Richard M. Nixon, the committee recommended establishing a national focal point for health education. The report led to the passage of the National Health Information and Health Promotion Act of 1976, which launched health education programs in Public Health Service agencies.
Lalonde, Marc. A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians: A Working Document (Ottawa: 1974). An epochal report (drafted mainly by two career civil servants, Hubert Laframboise and D. D. Gellman, under the direction of Lalonde, then Minister for National Health and Welfare), this document has shaped public health policy in Canada and many other countries.
Sheps, Cecil G. Higher Education for Public Health: A Report of the Milbank Memorial Fund Commission (New York: Prodist, 1976). This report constitutes a prescription, written under the commission's chair Sheps, for improved teaching of the sciences and arts of public health.
U.S. Public Health Service, Office of the Surgeon General. Healthy People: The Surgeon General's Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979). This comprehensive overview of the state of health of the American people was the first report by the U. S. Surgeon General on health promotion and disease prevention.
U.S. Public Health Service. Promoting Health, Preventing Disease: Objectives for the Nation (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1980). A necessary sequel to Healthy People, this document spelled out actions needed to improve health, with target dates by which measurable improvements could be achieved. It is a benchmark document.
Working Group on Inequalities in Health. Report of the Working Group on Inequalities in Health (London: Department of Health and Social Services, 1980). Known as the Black Report, the document was commissioned in the late 1970s by the Labour government of Britain, was submitted to the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher, and was subsequently suppressed for political reasons. It was published in 1982 as Inequalities in Health (London: Penguin) under the names of two of the members of the working group, Peter Townsend and Nick Davidson. (Sir Douglas Black, who had chaired the group, was unable to add his name because of the official position he held, but the report has always been identified with him.) This report was the first definitive statement of the underlying social and economic reasons that in many countries chronic illness, disability, and premature death do not affect all people equally, but disproportionately affect those in the lowest socioeconomic strata.
Barkan, Ilyse D. "Industry Invites Regulation: The Passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906." American Journal of Public Health 75 (1)(1985):18–26. An account of how the continuing effort in the United States to safeguard food and drugs was initiated following the disclosure of the commercial production of adulterated and unsanitary food, particularly the public outrage following the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine. The Future of Public Health (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1988). An important review, this report is constructively critical of the way public health services were conducted in the United States.
Guinta, Marguerite A., and Allegrante, John P. "The President's Committee on Health Education: A 20-Year Retrospective on Its Politics and Policy Impact." American Journal of Public Health 82 (1992):1033–1041. This article analyzes the committee's origins, methods, and impact on subsequent developments during the period in which national health policy began to emphasize health promotion.
U.S. Public Health Service, Office on Smoking and Health. Reducing the Consequences of Smoking—Twenty-Five Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General (Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1989). This review of the twenty-five years since the Surgeon General's report of 1964 summarizes the voluminous evidence of and reviews the progress made in the effort to control the smoking epidemic. All the annual reports of the Surgeon General on the health consequences of smoking are worth studying.
U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Guide to Clinical Preventive Services: An Assessment of the Effectiveness of 169 Interventions (Washington, DC: U.S. Public Health Service, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 1989). This report is an evidence-based critical analysis of ways to promote good health and prevent many important common diseases, such as various kinds of cancer. It was followed by several others, including, in 1994, the Clinicians' Handbook of Preventive Services: Putting Prevention into Practice (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).
Airhihenbuwa, Collins O. Health and Culture: Beyond the Western Paradigm (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995). This book challenges some of the assumptions about health and health promotion that are a product of Western history and culture, drawing contrasts with African history and health concepts.
World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future: The World Commission on Environment and Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). This commission was headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, then prime minister of Norway and later director of the World Health Organization. The report, also known as the Brundtland Report, provides the basic arguments concerning the need for sustainable development of the planet and the interconnectedness of global processes of economic and social development with the planetary biosphere.
Rose, Geoffrey A. The Strategy of Preventive Medicine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). A slim volume that expands on ideas first presented in Rose's 1985 paper, "Sick Individuals and Sick Populations" (International Journal of Epidemiology 14:32–38), this book emphasizes the importance of dealing with both individuals and groups to control public health problems.
Canadian Task Force on the Periodic Health Examination. Canadian Guide to Clinical Preventive Health Care (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1994). The Canadian Task Force preceded the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. In its first report, in 1979, the task force introduced the concept of the hierarchy of evidence, assigning the highest rank to evidence based on randomized controlled trials. This and subsequent work by the Canadian Task Force led to the development of evidence-based medicine.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General. Physical Activity and Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1996). A comprehensive review of the evidence that physical activity helps to promote good health for most people.
U.S. Public Health Service Functions Project. The Public Health Service: An Agenda for the Twenty-First Century (Washington, DC: U.S. Public Health Service, 1997). At the beginning of the new millennium, the Public Health Service outlined the major public health tasks for the twenty-first century. These tasks are substantially different from those put forward at the beginning of the twentieth century.
U.S. Public Health Service. Healthy People 2010: The Surgeon General's Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). This is the third such decennial planning document, following those in 1980 (for 1990) and in 1990 (for 2000), setting forth goals and specific health objectives for the United States. The 2010 statement includes two broad goals: to increase the quality and years of healthy life, and to eliminate health disparities among and between racial, ethnic, and other groups. It is available online at http://www.health.gov/healthypeople/Document/.
World Health Organization. World Health Report (Geneva: WHO). In addition to statistical summaries and overviews of prominent world public health problems, this annual publication is subtitled to indicate the areas emphasized each year. It is available online at http://www.who.int.
WORKS ON THE HISTORY OF HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Ackerman, Evelyn B. Health Care in the Parisian Countryside, 1800–1914 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990). This examination of how the French rural population perceived and dealt with illness gives insights into the social history of health in the nineteenth century. Separate chapters deal with public health efforts, cholera epidemics, and the bacteriological revolution.
Brockington, C. Fraser. A Short History of Public Health, 2nd edition (London: Churchill, 1966). This good brief historical review gives more emphasis to contributions by British and European public health workers.
Brodeur, Paul. The Asbestos Hazard (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1980). In this book aimed at workers and the general population, Brodeur provides an overview of the history of asbestos use and the diseases that it causes. He discusses the pioneering work of Irving Selikoff and his colleagues at Mt. Sinai Medical School. The international scope of the problem is described, as is the resistance that needed to be overcome before the start of concerted public health efforts.
Bullough, Bonnie, and Rosen, George. Preventive Medicine in the United States, 1900–1990: Trends and Interpretations (Canton, MA: Science History, 1992). This review of progress through most of the twentieth century is well referenced, with emphasis on public health and some discussion of trends in clinical preventive medicine.
Chesler, Ellen. Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). Sanger persistently posed the question: Whose body is it? She brought her nursing experience to the Lower East Side of New York City and, in 1916, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. After several weeks, the police raided it and put Sanger in jail. She went on to spearhead the birth control movement through her writings, lectures, and international conferences.
Curtain, Philip D. Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Curtain provides an account of the interaction of susceptible populations with pathogens to which they had little or no (inherited) resistance.
Fee, Elizabeth, and Acheson, Roy M., eds. A History of Education in Public Health (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). A comprehensive survey, this history includes an account of the rise of schools of public health in the United States and elsewhere.
Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994). A comprehensive survey of new and emerging infections by a first-class science reporter, this book about possible "future history" is highly recommended.
Garrison, Fielding H. An Introduction to the History of Medicine, 4th edition (Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 1929). The definitive work on the history of medicine, this book is still as reliable as it was when first written.
Greenwood, Major. Medical Statistics from Graunt to Farr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1977) and Some British Pioneers of Social Medicine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948; reprint, Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1970). These are two short works on the history of aspects of public health by the great pioneer epidemiologist who taught at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the 1930s and 1940s.
Hamilton, Alice. Exploring the Dangerous Trades (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985). An autobiography by a pioneer woman in occupational health, the work describes her personal and professional experiences during a lifetime of work in occupational health and industrial hygiene.
Hamlin, Christopher. The Science of Impurity: Water Analysis in Nineteenth Century Britain (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991). A history of early water science, this book places the sanitation issues of Great Britain during that formative period of public health into historical, philosophical, and social science perspectives.
Lilienfeld, Abraham M., ed. Times, Places, and Persons; Aspects of the History of Epidemiology (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). These proceedings of a colloquium on the history of epidemiology contain addresses by many leading figures in the field.
Major, Ralph H., ed. Classic Descriptions of Disease, with Biographical Sketches of the Authors, 3rd edition (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1978). This work is a useful anthology of the first systematic descriptions of many important and common diseases.
McKeown, Thomas. The Origins of Human Disease (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988). McKeown presents a thoughtful survey of biological, ecological, and behavioral determinants of infections, cancer, heart disease, and other ailments.
McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples (New York: Doubleday, 1976). This study provides an excellent brief account of the impact of epidemic diseases and food shortages on the health status of people, as well as the influence of these plagues on the rise and fall of civilizations.
Mullan, Fitzhugh. Plagues and Politics: The Story of the United States Public Health Service (New York: Basic Books, 1989). A well-written history of the major problems and events in the development of the lead federal health agency in the United States, this work is authored by a public health physician with a good sense of history.
Porter, Dorothy. Health, Civilization, and the State: A History of Public Health from Ancient to Modern Times (London: Routledge, 1999). This recent contribution to the field is more comprehensive than the work of either Rosen or Brockington.
Powell, John H. Bring out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). This book is a historical account of the impact of a yellow fever epidemic that claimed the lives of over 10 percent of the population of Philadelphia and caused its virtual evacuation. The extraordinary and mostly unsuccessful measures taken to combat the epidemic were based on competing schools of thought as to the cause, none of which appreciated the importance of the mosquito vector.
Rosen, George. A History of Public Health (New York: MD Publications, 1958; reprint, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Rosen presents a good brief historical survey of public health, particularly for its coverage of American contributions.
—— From Medical Police to Social Medicine: Essays on the History of Health Care (New York: Science History Publications, 1974). This work traces the philosophical and conceptual development of personal preventive care services.
Sigerist, Henry. E. A History of Medicine (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1958–1961). The most ambitious work ever conceived on the history of medicine, it was intended to be a massive, multivolume scholarly treatise. Unfortunately, Sigerist, a physician, philosopher, and medical historian, died before he could complete more than these two introductory volumes: Primitive and Archaic Medicine (Vol. 1) and Early Greek, Hindu, and Persian Medicine (Vol. 2). There is considerable emphasis on public health and preventive medical aspects throughout, as well as a masterly account of the complex interactions of medicine and human society in early civilizations.
—— Henry Sigerist on the History of Medicine, ed. F. Marti-Ibanez (New York: MD Publications, 1960). Sigerist is a towering figure in the history of medicine. For the general reader, this is probably the most accessible work among his prolific output.
Winslow, Charles-Edward Amory. The Conquest of Epidemic Disease: A Chapter in the History of Ideas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1943; reprint, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980). This book, probably more so than the same author's history of American epidemiology, traces the development of understanding about causes, methods of spread, and control of epidemic communicable diseases.
Zinsser, Hans. Rats, Lice and History (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935). A classic in the history of medicine, this is an eminent bacteriologist's racy account of the impact of epidemics, especially typhus, on the outcome of wars through the ages.
