Since George Rosen’s comprehensive
History of Public Health, first published in 1956, there has been no internationally comparative survey of the subject. Over the past three decades or so, however, research in this field has expanded rapidly, especially with regard to the history of disease and social order and public health politics and the state. Most of these studies have been highly scholarly and specialised and often dealing with only one aspect of public health in any one national context. The essays here examine the road history of public health in different national contexts in order to provide a work of comparative reference that could be used as a teaching aid.
The book focuses on whether the construction of a public health system is an inherent characteristic of the managerial function of modern political systems. Thus, each essay traces the steps leading to the growth of health government in various nations, examining the specific conflicts and contradictions which each incurred. As a result the volume highlights the need for further comparative analysis of public health systems as a highly fruitful topic for future study.
Dorothy PORTER: Introduction. Matthew RAMSEY: Public Health in France. Paul WEINDLING: Public Health in Germany. Christopher HAMLIN: State Medicine in Great Britain. Karin JOHANNISSON: The People's Health: Public Health Policies in Sweden. Susan GROSS SOLOMON: The Expert and the State in Russian Public Health: Continuities and Changes Across the Revolutionary Divide. Elizabeth FEE: Public Health and the State: the United States. Jay CASSELL: Public Health in Canada. Linda BRYDER: A New World? Two Hundred Years of Public Health in Australia and New Zealand. David ARNOLD: Crisis and Contradicition in India's Public Health. Maryinez LYONS: Public Health in Colonial Africa: The Belgian Congo. Mahito H. FUKUDA: Public Health in Modern Japan: From Regimen to Hygiene. Milton I. ROEMER: Internationalism in Medicine and Public Health.