Could you starve to death in England in 1839? The Chadwick-Farr controversy and the loss of the 'social' in public health

C. Hamlin

American Journal of Public Health, 1995, vol. 85, issue 6, 856-866

Abstract: The public health field has long been palled in two directions, either toward a narrower biomedical mission to control infectious disease or toward a broader mission to address the social and economic factors that adversely affect health and wellbeing. This paper explores as an instance of this tension an 1839 controversy between the statistician William Farr and the pioneering sanitary reformer Edwin Chadwick on the role of starvation as a cause of death. Farr thought hunger contributed significantly to many deaths; Chadwick wanted Farr to concentrate on the diseases from which people actually died. The paper then considers what the 'constitutional' disease theories, which underlay Farr's concerns, implied for public health using medical testimony on child labor in industrial revolution factories as an illustration. An exploration of this constitutional medicine may help provide a 'useable past' for modern public health workers interested in broadening the scope of public health.

Date: 1995
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1995:85:6:856-866_8

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Alfredo Morabia

More articles in American Journal of Public Health from American Public Health Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().