Thinking historically about public health. Issue 2 (30th November 2007)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bashford, Alison; Strange, Carolyn
• Is Part Of: Medical humanities. Volume 33:Issue 2(2007)
• Page Start: 87
• Page End: 92
• Publication Date: 2007-11-30
• Subjects: Medical history -- law -- infectious disease -- nationalism -- public health -- colonialism; Medicine and the humanities -- Periodicals; Medical ethics -- Periodicals; 616.1
• DOI: 10.1136/jmh.2006.000251
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-215X

Abstract

Abstract : This paper argues that analysing past public health policies calls for scholarship that integrates insights not just from medical history but from a broad range of historical fields. Recent studies of historic infectious disease management make this evident: they confirm that prior practices inhere in current perceptions and policies, which, like their antecedents, unfold amidst shifting amalgams of politics, culture, law and economics. Thus, explaining public health policy of the past purely in medical or epidemiological terms ignores evidence that it was rarely, if ever, designed solely on medical grounds at the time.