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This content is available through Read Online (Free) program, which relies on page scans. Since scans are not currently available to screen readers, please contact JSTOR User Support for access. We'll provide a PDF copy for your screen reader.The Perfect Food and the Filth Disease: Milk-borne Typhoid and Epidemiological Practice in Late Victorian Britain
JACOB STEERE WILLIAMS
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Vol. 65, No. 4 (OCTOBER 2010), pp. 514-545
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24631805
Page Count: 32
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Abstract
This article explores the initial set of epidemiological investigations in Victorian Britain that linked typhoid fever to milk from dairy cattle. Because Victorian epidemiologists first recognized the milk-borne route in outbreaks of typhoid fever, these investigations served as a model for later studies of milk-borne scarlet fever, diphtheria, and perhaps tuberculosis. By focusing on epidemiological practices conducted by Medical Inspectors at the Medical Department of the Local Government Board and Medical Officers of Health, I show that Victorian epidemiology was committed to field-based, observational methods that defined the professional nature of the discipline and its theories and practices. Epidemiological investigations of milk-borne typhoid heated up several important public health debates in the second half of the nineteenth century, and demonstrate how Victorian epidemiology was not solely wedded to examining population studies using statistical methods, as historians have typically argued, but also relied on observational case-tracing in individuals, animals, and even environments.
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Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences © 2010 Oxford University Press
