Description
Book SynopsisBlake takes a detailed look, based almost exclusively on original source material, at the public health history of the town of Boston. A significant part of this study is the insight it offers into early attitudes toward disease and death as well as other basic political, social, and economic questions.
Trade ReviewMuch can be said for the history of a problem limited in area and scope if it be significantly related to the world beyond… The author begins with the day the Massachusetts Bay Company limited the number of passengers in each ship as a health measure and ends with the dawn of the modern sanitary movement. Because he had to feel his way his book is methodologically as well as substantially valuable. Blake has neglected no source—official, periodical, monographic—and at no time does he fail to appreciate that contemporary measures reflected the best knowledge and experience… The story told here is one to inspire pride; it also reveals the need for many more such studies as a prelude to a full account of public health in the United States. -- Charles F. Mullett * American Historical Review *
Blake has written a book to be recommended without reservation, one which should be available to all students and practitioners of public health. -- George Rosen * American Journal of Public Health *
This well-documented study is rewarding both to the historian and to the general reader. The author has tapped original sources and brought together fresh information, scattered through records printed and in manuscript… This book, readable and scholarly, is important to anyone interested in the history of this country. * New York Historical Society Quarterly *
Table of Contents1. The Seventeenth Century 2. Founding a Basic Policy,1691-1720 3. The Medical Profession and Public Health,1720-1775 4. The Inoculation Controversy, 1721-1722 5. The Smallpox Era, 1722-1775 6. Endemic Disease and Public Health,1720-1775 7. The Revolutionary Era, 1775-1792 8. The Impact of Yellow Fever, 1793-1800 9. The Conquest of Smallpox,1798-1822 10. Quarantine and Yellow Fever,1800-1822 11. Sanitation and Endemic Disease,1800-1822 12. Public Health and Politics,1800-1824 Appendix 1: The Statistics of Smallpox Inoculation Appendix 2: Population, Deaths, and Death Rates, Boston,1701-1774 Appendix 3: Mortality Statistics of Boston, 1812-1821 A Note on the Sources Index
