PMID: 11619192Apr 1, 1997Paper

Professionalization in public health and the measurement of sanitary progress in nineteenth-century England and Wales

Social History of Medicine : the Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine
G Mooney

Abstract

During the course of the nineteenth century, the Registrar-General's Office in England and Wales used crude mortality rates as a demographic barometer of the environmental conditions of towns and cities. The local authorities in places with comparatively high rates were exhorted to improve them through more and better public health reforms. This technique of public coercion was often criticized, especially by a selection of Medical Officers of Health, who argued that crude death rates were an inaccurate measure of changing mortality levels and thus the success of preventive medicine. The debate over sanitary progress created no little tension between staff at the General Register Office and the Medical Officers, as well as between the Medical Officers themselves, at a time when public health doctors were seeking to properly establish themselves as a legitimate, professionalized branch within medicine. Despite this, the collection and dissemination of local mortality statistics became an indispensable component for the nineteenth century campaign to improve the nation's health.

Citations

Sep 13, 2002·The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry·Michael Dudley, Fran Gale
Mar 4, 2005·Environmental Health Perspectives·Beate RitzJohn Balmes
Jul 11, 2003·The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health·P Brimblecombe
Jul 9, 2008·Social History of Medicine : the Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine·Nigel Richardson
Aug 10, 2010·The Journal of Trauma·Asher HirshbergMichael Stein
Apr 13, 2005·The Journal of Trauma·Asher HirshbergMichael Stein

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