M1- Compare historical and current features of public health
Public Health has been developing from the 19th century and is still developing in the present day. Public health was best described by the Yale professor Winslow in 1920 who described it as ‘the art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical health and efficiency through organized community efforts for the sanitation of the environment, the control of community infections, the education of the individual in principles of personal hygiene, the organization of medical and nursing services for the early diagnosis and preventive treatment of disease, and the development of the social machinery which will ensure to every individual in the community a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health’. Public health covers a range of areas, and is constantly having to be changed to keep up with the changing health needs of the public. (Fleming, M. and Parker, E. (2009) An introduction to Public Health Churchill Livingston Elsevier: Australia)
During the Victorian Era, public health was not an issue that was dealt with by the government. There weren’t public hospitals, and only those from a wealthy background were able to access medical care. There was no such thing as vaccinations as there was very few educated on health, and many people died from diseases and infections in all classes, that now a day are easily treated. The people of this time were very uneducated about personal hygiene care and knew nothing about the spread of diseases. The people based their beliefs on their interpretations of what they saw going on around them. Due to the lack of knowledge it was believed if someone died it was because they were, for example, possessed by a daemon or they were a witch. In today’s society we have the understanding and science to allow us insight into the real reasons that people die and get unwell, we know that illness are