History of Public Health

History of Public Health

18th Century

  • Government efforts to address environmental sanitation and related problems.

19th Century

  • Environmental sanitation emphasized as key to ending cholera & typhus (CT) due to mass urbanization.

  • Louis Pasteur (1860)

    • Formulated the Germ Theory.

    • One of the founders (LRF) of Bacteriology, alongside Robert Koch & Ferdinand Cohn.

    • Known for discoveries in vaccination, microbial fermentation, & pasteurization (VMFP).

    • Reduced mortality of puerperal fever.

    • Created the first vaccines for anthrax & rabies (AR).

Mid-20th Century

  • Public health reoriented to focus on diseases of lifestyle, including various cancers and cardiovascular disease.