Sarah Gibbs

Helen Brown
Community Health
Artifact 2- E. Portfolio
Public Health Timeline Summary

Public Health is an industry/organization that has been around since the beginning of
civilization. After reading this timeline I have decided to organize my summary by pre-
eighteenth century with the eighteenth century, nineteenth century and 2000’s to current.
Throughout all of these historical events the article highlights two major points that have
defined our progress in public health. Those two points are growth in our scientific knowledge
of disease, and public acceptance of disease prevention and control. By doing this summary I
think anyone who reads my summary will be able to see the general leaps and bounds of our
public health and all the work that our public health officials have done.
Before the eighteenth century people believed that those who became ill from the
plague, cholera or other diseases were sick because they were in poor mental or spiritual
health. People understood that diseases were causing death, but they did not acknowledge the
scientific background of pathogens or disease spread. Toward the end of the seventeenth
century and beginning of the eighteenth century, people started acknowledging that diseases
could be spread person to person. To deal with this isolation and quarantine actions were
created and started to be implicated on those who showed signs of disease. Isolation and
quarantine soon became very common measures for disease control and councils were created
to enforce these rules and regulate who needed to be isolated vs. quarantined. Within the
eighteenth century we saw our first hospitals being created in Pennsylvania and New York.
These hospitals were run by volunteers to help the physically and mentally ill patients of their
communities. Before these volunteer hospitals were started, neighbors of sick individuals were
responsible for caring for them. Within the eighteenth century we also say the implication of
rubbing small pox scabs on non-infected individuals was seen to be an effective method of
curing small pox. This led to the development of future vaccinations even though people in this
era did not know how the scabs were protecting those not sick.
The nineteenth century is marked in public health history by the acknowledgement of
filth and unsanitary conditions contributing to disease. This phase is now referred to as “The
Great Sanitary Awakening.” By knowing that sanitation lead to disease, health of a community
became a social role and responsibility and people started to become even more aware of how
each person individually could contribute the health or lack thereof in a community. Even
though we knew filth was causing disease we were still having incredibly high death rates. Our
infant mortality rate was 200 per every 1000 births, and Small Pox and Typus were still infecting
a large portion of the populations within our most populated urban cities worldwide. Due to
the high populations in these urban areas, the poor and rich were forced to interact more than
in previous eras, making individuals aware that sickness and disease was not actually only a
thing for a poor. This was the opening door to our healthcare equality laws. People began to
see that disease was not a factor of your societal status but individual health. This sanitary
movement lead to acceptance of widely known public health activist, lawyer Edwin Chadwick.
He proposed that since filth and trash were causing these diseases, we needed methods to rid
waste from these over populated urban areas. He suggested drainage and waste systems along
with the idea of a having health officials for the country, states and districts. These ideas were
highly controversial but slowly got accepted by European countries followed by The United
States. Lamuel Shattuck collected vital statistics of different cities in urban and rural areas. With
these statistics he could prove that the health conditions were worse in urban areas and with
individuals who failed to take responsibility for their personal cleanliness. His ideas were not
widely accepted due to political differences at the time. They became accepted after the civil
war when governmental agencies were created to handle national issues one of which being
health. These issues were steadily more and more acknowledged even though no real reason
behind disease was known.
In the late nineteenth century, we had scientific knowledge of bacteria with the germ
theory. Finally, we had a specific reason for disease and an explanation as to why there were so
many different forms of disease. With this information and the increase in public health
agencies there were more forms of regulation and education about disease. This started the
idea of environmental and individual factors contributing to one’s health. In the late nineteenth
century, we had the creation of governmental labs for each state to research bacteria and
solutions to disease. We created our first water and sewage treatment plants to reduce
bacteria growth. With all these labs created and researching bacteria and viruses, antibiotics
and vaccinations started to be created to treat and prevent the spread of deadly and popular
diseases. It was in this time span that public health became a science and experts/professionals
were selected to study and advance our public health systems and population health.
In the twentieth century we started acknowledging that disease and health was caused
by more than just bacteria and environmental cleanliness. Public health moved from only
treating disease to educating people about overall health. Health habits, physical health and
nutrition became a widely worked on area of public health to help people keep up their overall
health instead of just worrying about having or not having a disease. During this time frame and
still currently our public health department is growing with different agencies and bureaus to
work on specific aspects of public health. We have started working with obesity, tobacco use,
maternal health, health equality and so much more. Public Health is now regulated on regional,
state and national levels to promote and protect the health of all individuals of all areas. We
have more agencies to fund research for diseases, and other health issues such as tobacco and
obesity. The main obstacle of the twentieth century has been finances. Public health activist
and professionals can only do as much as they are provided funds to do. With each political
presidency we have different amounts of funds available. These funds are also determined by
the current epidemics that arise.
In conclusion, public health has come so far from disease being only for the poor to
being caused by a bacterium. We have come from thinking that only our environmental filth
causing disease to bacteria and life choices. I think that through reading this summary we can
be inspired to better our already better national health. We can find new ways to cure diseases
as our technology is constantly improving, be more proactive with life style choices as we are
educated about life choices, and work on having ethically sound laws that protect all individuals
equally within a population.