The Filth Disease - (Rochester Studies in Medical History) by Jacob Steere-Williams (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Shows how the investigation of local outbreaks of typhoid fever in Victorian Britain led to the emergence of the modern discipline of epidemiology as the leading science of public health

Typhoid fever is a food- and water-borne infectious disease that was insidious and omnipresent in Victorian Britain. It was one of the most prolific diseases of the Industrial Revolution. There was a palpable public anxiety aboutthe disease in the Victorian era, no doubt fueled by media coverage of major outbreaks across the nation, but also because Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, died of the disease in 1861. Their son and heir, Prince Albert Edward, contracted and nearly succumbed to typhoid a decade later in 1871.

The Filth Disease shows that typhoid was at the center of a number of critical debates about health, science, and governance. Victorian public health reformers, the book argues, working in central and local government, framed typhoid as the most pressing public health problem in order to persuade local officials to implement sanitary infrastructure to prevent the spread of disease. In this period British epidemiologists uncovered how typhoid is spread via food and water supplies, disrupting the longstanding idea that typhoid was spread via filth. In the process the modern disciple of epidemiology emerged as the chief science of public health. Typhoid was as much a social and political problem as it was a scientific one, and The Filth Disease provides a striking reminder of the cultural context in which infectious diseases strike populations and how scientists study them.

Review Quotes

A nuanced case study of developing chains of evidence, hallmarks of outbreak investigation, and rhetorical performances of Victorian epidemiology... Should be required reading for historians of public health and epidemiology.-- "JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES"

Offers a careful and detailed discussion of typhoid and epidemiology from the late 1860s to 1901. Steere-Williams tells an important story of how epidemiologists came to claim and define a field of knowledge and authority to speak for the public good.-- "VICTORIAN STUDIES"