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The article addresses the British sanitary movement in the 1830s and 1840s, analyzing the ideology that permeated official efforts to promote public health. The sources used consist primarily of the inquiries carried out by royal commissions into the state of sanitation in towns and cities. The main argument is that the ideological assumptions underpinning these inquiries can be understood as part of a political economy of public health, within which tensions can be observed arising from the contradictions between a liberal perspective and the need for greater intervention on the part of the government.

Colonial officials remarked disparagingly about the nature of houses and what they presented as congested layouts in Gold Coast communities. Subsequently, drawing on nineteenth-century epidemiological theory that connected diseases and poor health to defective housing and congested settlements, the colonial administration introduced measures to redesign and reorder Gold Coast communities. This article examines the connection between colonial town planning and housing measures and the politics of sanitation and public health in the Gold Coast. It argues that the colonial state's imposition of imported British town planning measures, building techniques, and housing styles in the Gold Coast and their aspiration to compel Gold Coast people to build and pattern their communities along so-called sanitary lines could not be fully realised. Thus, the extent to which colonial town planning and the accompanying transformations in African building styles improved sanitation and consequently, public health, is difficult to determine. Nonetheless, this study reveals that the local population's holistic approaches to spatial designing and planning of their communities and their building styles were somewhat altered by the colonial imposition of eurocentric town planning policies and building styles., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.)

In 1906, Emílio Ribas reorganized the Sanitation Service and centralized São Paulo state public health services in the state capital. A campaign to combat trachoma, an ophthalmic disease, was implemented as part of this project. This article analyzes this campaign, which provided care for the sick living on rural properties in a process that predated the 1917 Rural Sanitary Code. The empirical data was obtained from government reports, decrees, medical journals and newspapers. We conclude that Ribas, by creating an organization that integrated the efforts of the sanitary districts and the Trachoma Commission medical teams, sought to form a complex apparatus to combat the diseases present in both urban areas and the countryside.

Economic development and good health depended on access to clean water and sanitation. Therefore, because economic development and good health depended on access to clean water and sanitation, beginning in the early 1970s the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), and others began a period of sustained interest in developing both for the billions without either. During the 1980s, two massive and wildly ambitious projects showed what was possible. The International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade and the Blue Nile Health Project aimed for nothing less than the total overhaul of the way water was developed. This was, according to the WHO, "development in the spirit of social justice."

Investments in water and sanitation systems are believed to have led to the decline in typhoid fever in developed countries, such that most cases now occur in regions lacking adequate clean water and sanitation. Exploring seasonal and long-term patterns in historical typhoid mortality in the United States can offer deeper understanding of disease drivers. We fit modified Time-series Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered models to city-level weekly mortality counts to estimate seasonal and long-term typhoid transmission. We examined seasonal transmission separately by city and aggregated by water source. Typhoid transmission peaked in late summer/early fall. Seasonality varied by water source, with the greatest variation occurring in cities with reservoirs. We then fit hierarchical regression models to measure associations between long-term transmission and annual financial investments in water and sewer systems. Overall historical $1 per capita ($16.13 in 2017) investments in the water supply were associated with approximately 5% (95% confidence interval: 3-6%) decreases in typhoid transmission, while $1 increases in the overall sewer system investments were associated with estimated 6% (95% confidence interval: 4-9%) decreases. Our findings aid in the understanding of typhoid transmission dynamics and potential impacts of water and sanitation improvements, and can inform cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions to reduce the typhoid burden., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The article presents the history of development of sanitary business and state sanitary epidemiological service of the Primorskiy Krai related to general history of Russia in XIX-XX centuries. The study established input of physicians of Vladivostok into implementation of sanitary activities during first decades from city foundation: opening of the Pasteur station, struggle with epidemics of very dangerous infectious diseases, functioning of sanitary executive commission. The activities concerning support of sanitary epidemiological well-being of population during the Civil War in the Far East, years of socialism development and in post-Soviet period are considered.

Public health has always been, and remains, an interdisciplinary field, and engineering was closely aligned with public health for many years. Indeed, the branch of engineering that has been known at various times as sanitary engineering, public health engineering, or environmental engineering was integral to the emergence of public health as a distinct discipline. However, in the United States (U.S.) during the 20th century, the academic preparation and practice of this branch of engineering became largely separated from public health. Various factors contributed to this separation, including an evolution in leadership roles within public health; increasing specialization within public health; and the emerging environmental movement, which led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with its emphasis on the natural environment. In this paper, we consider these factors in turn. We also present a case study example of public health engineering in current practice in the U.S. that has had large-scale positive health impacts through improving water and sanitation services in Native American and Alaska Native communities. We also consider briefly how to educate engineers to work in public health in the modern world, and the benefits and challenges associated with that process. We close by discussing the global implications of public health engineering and the need to re-integrate engineering into public health practice and strengthen the connection between the two fields.

Competing Interests: None

The article takes a look into the disciplinary projects approved by the authorities in the province of Mendoza (Argentina) during the cholera epidemic that took place during the summer of 1886-1887. Although the projects were intended to ameliorate the sanitary conditions of the whole of the population, these were focused and applied more intensively on the underprivileged sectors and their areas of inhabitance. This follows the ideas and representations created by the State regarding the illness and its death during this period.

Today, as Greenland focuses on more economic and cultural autonomy, the continued development of societal infrastructure systems is vital. At the same time, pressure is put on the systems by a lack of financial resources and locally based professional competences as well as new market-based forms of organization. Against this background, the article discusses the challenges facing Greenland's self-rule in relation to further develop the existing water and wastewater systems so that they can contribute to the sustainable development of Greenland. The article reviews the historical development of the water supply and wastewater system. This leads to an analysis of the sectorisation, which in recent decades has reorganized the Greenlandic infrastructures, and of how this process is influencing local sustainable development. The article discusses the socio-economic and human impacts and points to the need for developing the water and sanitation system to support not only hygiene and health, but also local sustainable development.

In 1878, amid a rapidly proliferating social interest in public health and cleanliness, a group of sanitary scientists and reformers founded the Parkes Museum of Hygiene in central London. Dirt and contagion knew no social boundaries, and the Parkes's founders conceived of the museum as a dynamic space for all classes to better themselves and their environments. They promoted sanitary science through a variety of initiatives: exhibits of scientific, medical and architectural paraphernalia; product endorsements; and lectures and certificated courses in practical sanitation, food inspection and tropical hygiene. While the Parkes's programmes reified the era's hierarchies of class and gender, it also pursued a public-health mission that cut across these divisions. Set apart from the great cultural and scientific popular museums that dominated Victorian London, it exhibited a collection with little intrinsic value, and offered an education in hygiene designed to be imported into visitors' homes and into urban spaces in the metropole and beyond. This essay explores the unique contributions of the Parkes Museum to late nineteenth-century sanitary science and to museum development, even as the growth of public-health policy rendered the museum obsolete.

The 1899/1900 arrival of bubonic plague in Argentina had thrown the model status of Buenos Aires as a hygienic city into crisis. Where the idea of foreign threats and imported epidemics had dominated the thinking of Argentina's sanitarians at that time, plague renewed concerns about hidden threats within the fabric of the capital's dense environment; concerns that led to new sanitary measures and unprecedented rat-campaigns supported by the large-scale application of sulphur dioxide. The article tells the story of early twentieth-century urban sanitation in Buenos Aires through the lens of a new industrial disinfection apparatus. The Aparato Marot, also known as Sulfurozador was acquired and integrated in the capital's sanitary administration by the epidemiologist José Penna in 1906 to materialise two key lessons learned from plague. First, the machine was supposed to translate the successful disinfection practices of global maritime sanitation into urban epidemic control in Argentina. Second, the machine's design enabled public health authorities to reinvigorate a traditional hygienic concern for the entirety of the city's terrain. While the Sulfurozador offered effective destruction of rats, it promised also a comprehensive - and utopian - disinfection of the whole city, freeing it from all imaginable pathogens, insects as well as rodents. In 1910, the successful introduction of the Sulfurozador encouraged Argentina's medico-political elite to introduce a new principle of 'general prophylaxis'. This article places the apparatus as a technological modernisation of traditional sanitary practices in the bacteriological age, which preserved the urban environment - 'el terreno' - as a principal site of intervention. Thus, the Sulfurozador allowed the 'higienistas' to sustain a long-standing utopian vision of all-encompassing social, bodily and political hygiene into the twentieth century.

Research into the work of Szachna Eliasz Cynamon in the Rio Doce Valley Program (1952-1960) is presented. The key sources are from the Department of Archives and Documentation and the Department of Sanitation and Environmental Health at Fiocruz, as well as the family's own archive. At the time, the rates of malaria in the region were high. Born in Poland, Cynamon migrated to Brazil in the 1930s while still a child, where he graduated in sanitary engineering. He was hired to work in Colatina (Espírito Santo) and Governador Valadares (Minas Gerais) between 1952 and 1960, focusing on sewage and water treatment and supply, while also holding sanitation education courses for the local people as part of a Brazil-USA cooperation agreement.

In 1923, Doctor Sebastião Barroso, head of the Rural Sanitation and Prophylaxis Service of Bahia, submitted a report on the previous year's activities. The document contains information on initiatives coordinated by the entity on rural epidemics and prophylaxis, accompanied by a compilation of the reports by the professionals responsible for the rural prophylaxis units and tables containing data on the different regions in the state, notifications received, and expenses. The section of this document presented here enables us to investigate the state's role in addressing public health issues in a context marked by recurring outbreaks of epidemics, especially yellow fever.

Over the past century, advancements within the mainstream dairy foods processing industry have acted in complement with other dairy-affiliated industries to produce a human food that has few rivals with regard to safety, nutrition, and sustainability. These advancements, such as milk pasteurization, may appear commonplace in the context of a modern dairy processing plant, but some consideration of how these advancements came into being serve as a basis for considering what advancements will come to bear on the next century of processing advancements. In the year 1917, depending on where one resided, most milk was presented to the consumer through privately owned dairy animals, small local or regional dairy farms, or small urban commercial dairies with minimal, or at best nascent, processing capabilities. In 1917, much of the retail milk in the United States was packaged and sold in returnable quart-sized clear glass bottles fitted with caps of various design and composition. Some reports suggest that the cost of that quart of milk was approximately 9 cents-an estimated $2.00 in 2017 US dollars. Comparing that 1917 quart of milk to a quart of milk in 2017 suggests several differences in microbiological, compositional, and nutritional value as well as flavor characteristics. Although a more comprehensive timeline of significant processing advancements is noted in the AppendixTable A1 to this paper, we have selected 3 advancements to highlight; namely, the development of milk pasteurization, cleaning and sanitizing technologies, and sanitary specifications for processing equipment. Finally, we provide some insights into the future of milk processing and suggest areas where technological advancements may need continued or strengthened attention and development as a means of securing milk as a food of high safety and value for the next century to come., (Copyright © 2017 American Dairy Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This paper presents the history of sanitary-epidemiological services in the context of the health, economic and socio-political situation in Poland in the years 1944-2014, with a critical analysis of legal restraints, efficiency and achievements. Polish Sanitary Services, established in 1919, as a state service, have preserved for more than 95 years (also during World War II and the occupation) the continuity of its structures and essential objectives to enable their implementation in the field of public health protection. The unique effectiveness of actions was recorded in the years 1954-1998 and 2002-2009 in the time of central (vertical) subordination of sanitary-epidemiological services. The pre-accession preparation to the European Union (EU) strongly accelerated the development of sanitary-epidemiological services in Poland. Polish accession to the European Union has promoted the implementation of the WHO document "Health for All in the 21st Century" and the reduction of "health inequalities".

Sir Richard Owen, a Lancastrian, was a prominent biologist, comparative anatomist, geologist, palaeontologist and known for coining the term dinosaur. His expertise in anatomical dissection proved to be one of his biggest assets and aided his career progression at the Royal College of Surgeons and the Zoological Society. Owen's apprenticeship in Lancaster helped him to gain expertise in anatomy and anatomical dissection. The authors aim to provide some novel contextual background to his childhood in Lancaster, his affection for his hometown and his contribution to Lancaster's sanitary reform. The latter aspect of his scientific accomplishments is typically overlooked.

In mid-19th century Lima, Peru, death had various causes. Nonetheless, epidemics raised greater concern among the population and authorities. The highest number of deaths was due to endemic diseases caused by poor sanitary conditions. However, as these were accepted as routine deaths, they were ignored.

Background: As the Millennium Development Goals ended, and were replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals, efforts have been made to evaluate the achievements and performance of official development assistance (ODA) in the health sector. In this study, we explore trends in the expansion of water and sanitation coverage in developing countries and the performance of ODA., Design: We explored inequality across developing countries by income level, and investigated how ODA for water and sanitation was committed by country, region, and income level. Changes in inequality were tested via slope changes by investigating the interaction of year and income level with a likelihood ratio test. A random effects model was applied according to the results of the Hausman test., Results: The slope of the linear trend between economic level and sanitation coverage has declined over time. However, a random effects model suggested that the change in slope across years was not significant (e.g. for the slope change between 2000 and 2010: likelihood ratio χ 2  = 2.49, probability > χ 2  = 0.1146). A similar pro-rich pattern across developing countries and a non-significant change in the slope associated with different economic levels were demonstrated for water coverage. Our analysis shows that the inequality of water and sanitation coverage among countries across the world has not been addressed effectively during the past decade. Our findings demonstrate that the countries with the least coverage persistently received far less ODA per capita than did countries with much more extensive water and sanitation coverage, suggesting that ODA for water and sanitation is poorly targeted., Conclusion: The most deprived countries should receive more attention for water and sanitation improvements from the world health community. A strong political commitment to ODA targeting the countries with the least coverage is needed at the global level.

In the city of Bari (Italy), during the 19th century, energetic political battles were carried out between the administrators and governors in order to ensure the population the primary resource for life: the water. In this town, there were no rivers or drinking water sources; the thirsty population drank from public and private cisterns for collecting rainwater. The condition of the pavement, poor maintenance of the reservoirs and the presence of absorbent cesspits in the vicinity of the wells were often the cause of pathogenic microorganisms' infiltration, such as viruses, bacteria or parasites, which were responsible for the most common digestive disorders. This paper aims to highlight the ties between political campaigns for the construction of the aqueduct and the recognition by the scientific community and governors of the causal link between certain diseases and infected water. The case of the city of Bari is exemplary because, according to the statistics of the causes of death, the hygienic conditions of the city changed parallel to the development of urban infrastructures, which radically intensified with the construction of the Apulian aqueduct in 1915, and the sewage system in 1920.

While the majority of colonial public health officials in Africa intermittently used measures for mosquito containment, the government of French West Africa made the creation of what were called mosquito brigades into a vital element of urban sanitary policy. The project seemed to offer a chance to curb the impact of mosquito-borne disease on the colonial economy. Yet, despite the full support of sanitary policy on the federal, colonial, and local levels, the government found that conducting a "War on Mosquitoes" was far more difficult than they originally envisioned. The colonial government's mosquito brigades were understaffed and often ran into resistance from both the African and European populations. Above all, the government's urban mosquito control programs failed because their goal of controlling the breeding of mosquitoes lay beyond the limited capabilities of the both local government and the Federation's health and sanitation services. This paper will examine the origins and fate of the French West African mosquito brigades and provide a context for analyzing their atypical place among colonial efforts at malaria prevention., (© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Evidence from a number of historical studies has demonstrated a strong impact of the provision of clean water on mortality risks, while no clear effect has been reported in others. We investigated the relationship between water supply, sanitation, and infant survival in Tartu, a university town in Estonia, 1897-1900. Based on data from parish registers, which were linked to the first census of the Russian Empire, the analysis reveals a clear disadvantage for infants in households using surface water, compared with families that acquired water from groundwater or artesian wells. The impact is stronger in the later stages of infancy. Competing-risk analysis shows that the effect is more pronounced for deaths caused by diseases of the digestive system. Our findings suggest that it may have been possible to improve the water supply, and consequently reduce infant mortality, before the introduction of piped water and sewage systems.

This article demonstrates that the position of dominance enjoyed by state sanitation companies dictates the public policy decision-making process for sanitation in Brazil. These companies' hegemony is explained here through the analysis of a path that generated political and economic incentives that have permitted its consolidation over time. Through the content analysis of the legislation proposed for the sector and the material produced by the stakeholders involved in the approval of new regulations for the sector in 2007, the study identifies the main sources of incentive introduced by the adoption of the National Sanitation Plan, which explain certain structural features of the current sanitation policy and its strong capacity to withstand the innovations proposed under democratic rule.

Sanitation measures of the final period of World War II included the sanitary surveillance of water and power forces, observation of their placement and content of the territory occupied by them, monitor the implementation of military rules of personal hygiene and health education. The content of anti-epidemic measures was control of vectors of infectious and parasitic diseases, the protection of troops against the penetration of these diseases from the outside, the sanitary-epidemiological investigation and vaccination of staff, early detection and isolation of infectious patients, their timely hospitalization, disinfection of the source of infection, identify the sources of infection and epidemiological surveillance behind the hearth. Epidemiological welfare of the Red Army has been achieved by the virtue of the hard and persistent work of many thousands of military doctors, good organization of anti-epidemic protection of troops and use of military medical service of science.

The article examines the cholera morbus epidemic that afflicted the province of Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1855, focusing on the medical and scientific controversies about how the disease spread, which split medical opinion into two camps: contagion and infection. Documents and reports produced by the Society of Medicine of Pernambuco and the General Public Health Board were analyzed, based on which it was possible to describe the official medical and sanitation program, involving engineers, scientists, and physicians, designed to plan a salubrious city - a model of civilization that combined redeveloping the urban space and disseminating new habits amongst the local people. It is essentially an exercise in observing a science and a society as they take shape.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, when health started becoming an issue on the political agenda, Arthur Neiva and Belisário Penna travelled to the sertão semi-arid region of Goiás state, Brazil, to diagnose the population's state of health, particularly highlighting the spread of Chagas disease and the decadence of the sertão. The political elite in the state reacted to the sanitarians' findings. This article observes the controversy played out in the pages of A Informação Goiana magazine. The publication supported the region's interests, because its leaders were sure that it was down to the people of Goiás to reveal the truth about the sertão, its people, and its potentialities.

Mathematical models of typhoid transmission were first developed nearly half a century ago. To facilitate a better understanding of the historical development of this field, we reviewed mathematical models of typhoid and summarized their structures and limitations. Eleven models, published in 1971 to 2014, were reviewed. While models of typhoid vaccination are well developed, we highlight the need to better incorporate water, sanitation and hygiene interventions into models of typhoid and other foodborne and waterborne diseases. Mathematical modeling is a powerful tool to test and compare different intervention strategies which is important in the world of limited resources. By working collaboratively, epidemiologists and mathematicians should build better mathematical models of typhoid transmission, including pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions, which will be useful in epidemiological and public health practice., (© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The article considers activity of municipal self-governments of Russia concerning support of sanitary epidemiological well-being of cities in the late XIX--early XX centuries. The acuteness of problem of sanitary conditions of urban settlements particularly became visible in post-reform period due to increasing of number of urban population, alteration of setup and rhythm of life in cities, appearance of new forms of worker's daily chores. Al this, against the background of underdevelopment of communal sphere aggravated epidemiological situation in cities. The impulse to improvement and development of sanitary control was made by the city regulations of 1870 presenting to town authorities the right to deal with sanitary issues. The significant input into improvement of cities was made first of all at the expense of construction of water supplies and sewerage and support of sanitary control of these spheres of municipal economy. Under town councils of many cities the sanitary commissions were organized to support permanent sanitary control in town. The development of town sanitation followed the way of specialization. The housing and communal, trade and food, school and sanitary and sanitary and veterinary control were organized.

This article examines the relationship between theory and practice in nineteenth century English public health disinfection practice. Disinfection undertaken by local authorities and practised on objects, spaces and people became an increasingly common public health practice in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and was part of a newly developed public health system of 'stamping out' disease as described by Hardy. Despite disinfection's key role in public health policy, it has thus far not received significant investigation or historiographical attending. This article explores the development of disinfection policy at local level, highlighting that despite commentators assumptions that increasingly exacting standards of disinfection required professional oversight rather than that of the 'amateur' public, there was a significant gap between laboratory based knowledge and evidence derived from practical experience. Laboratory conditions could not replicate those found in day-to-day disinfection, and there were myriad debates about how to create a mutually understandable scientific standard for testing. Despite increasing efforts to bring local disinfection in line with new ideas promulgated by central government and disinfection researchers, the mismatches between the two meant that there was greater divergence. This tension lay at the heart of the changes in disinfection theory and practice in the second half of the nineteenth century, and illustrate the complexities of the impact of germ theory on public health policy., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Although Dickens is still known as having been a highly visible supporter of England's well-known nineteenth-century sanitary movement, he became, in fact, deeply troubled by many of this movement's fundamental tenets, as evidenced by journal narratives on fever that he edited and wrote in the mid-nineteenth century. Rather than water and sewer engineering works and a sanitary regime policed by government agencies as envisaged by Edwin Chadwick and other sanitary reformers, Dickens's view by 1855 was that only a massive erasure of the existing social and political systems and their replacement by an utterly new infrastructure would suffice.